Orrin Hatch, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, banged the gavel. Let the one and only sham hearing on the Graham-Cassidy healthcare bill begin.
But then chanting from the disabled protesters in the gallery erupted. ”No cuts to Medicaid! Save our Liberty!” The noise was too loud for the hearing to proceed. As police began wrestling people in wheelchairs and blind people out of the hearing room. Hatch banged the gavel again. That made me laugh. It was as if he thought the protesters would think, “Uh-oh, Orrin Hatch banged the gavel. We better cool it or he might get mad.”
As the wrestling and chanting continued, Hatch said, “If you want a hearing, you better shut up.”
Graham-Cassidy, like all previous Republican attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, was a brutal assault on Medicaid. It would have imposed harsh caps on Medicaid spending that could have reduced Medicaid allotments to states by as much as a trillion dollars in ten years. For the protesters, that’s a frightening personal attack. Who buys their ridiculously expensive wheelchairs and other equipment? Probably Medicaid. Who pays their medical bills? Probably Medicaid. Who pays the wages of the people who come to their homes and assist them so they can be out and about? Probably Medicaid. It's pretty hard to be a disabled American and not derive something of great value from Medicaid, unless you’re really rich.
Hatch was one of the Republicans who voted for the Americans With Disabilities Act when it passed the Senate in 1990.
Hatch has been a dutiful supporter of all these assaults. But Hatch was one of the Republicans who voted for the Americans With Disabilities Act when it passed the Senate in 1990 by a vote of 91 to 6. And he was more than just a yay vote. He was a sponsor and active proponent of the ADA’s passage. After some court decisions weakened the ADA by interpreting it narrowly, the ADA Amendments Act was passed in 2008 to put teeth back into the law. Hatch was instrumental in passing that legislation, too.
Republicans who actually seem to care about the rights and wellbeing of disabled Americans get caught up a lot in this hypocrisy. Inevitably, any moments of enlightenment clash with the fact that they are Republicans. And when that happens, they are Republicans first, so they must do what Republicans do.
Republicans tried to tell us that a trillion bucks could be cut from Medicaid without anyone getting hurt. I don’t know if Hatch truly believed that we could suspend the laws of arithmetic, or if he was just playing along.
Republicans also tried to tell us that their leaner meaner version of Medicaid would be a great improvement because it would give governors and state legislatures greater “flexibility” to determine who gets served by Medicaid. Remember when governors and state legislatures had greater “flexibility” to determine who gets served at lunch counters?
I don’t know if Hatch really believed that one either. But it doesn’t matter. He was a member of the gang that tried to screw us. That’s not how you treat your friends.