you on state of the union she could see herself unlikely voting for this bill. you have lisa murkowski from alaska very serious concerns. still undecided. now ted cruz conservative senators, saying what the changes that were made last night to try to get people on board, they don t get his support. mike lee as well on the regulatory side of things hasn t committed to a yes vote yet. it s important to look at the issues. they are not homogenous. you have people like murkowski on one side. cutting back on the obamacare care regulations, things like essential health benefits, price protections for pre-existing conditions, that is crucial on the state level in his view to driving down premiums. he wants the bill to go further than it already does. and worth noting if you talk to outside analysts, they say it goes a long way for states to get rid of those protections.
things to happen simultaneously, which is why you saw a large number of current insurance commissioners and a number of us reformer, former insurance commissioners strongly asking congress to deep six this bill and go back to bipartisan agreement. both getting rid of the mandate keeping younger and healthier people potentially out of the market, but more importantly, getting, allowing states to get rid of essential health benefits, so undermining the very package of benefits that a lot of people who are ill, desperately rely on and allowing states to charge excessive amounts potentially to people who have a pre-existing condition. that s a very effective way to get rid of pre-existing guarantees. what people are terrified about is going back to where we were when i was insurance commissioner. where a company could basically charge someone with a
have you no marbles? struggling, fighting for his there s such a disconnect. a real problem. such a disconnect. there s a word for it. chuck schumer sold john mccain a bill of goods. sad. this is our president. as well as, quote, mccain let his best friend, lg, lindsey graham, down. another republican against the legislation is senator susan collins of maine who said yesterday, quote, it s very difficult for me to envision a scenario where i would end up voting for the graham-cassidy bill. grants were added to entice senator collins as well as another key republican holdout, senator lisa murkowski of alaska. get out of coverage regulations, including essential health benefits and while it says insurance companies must cover people with pre-existing
that s absolute garbage. the legislation specifically says that the state applying for a waiver would have to ensure that those with pre-existing conditions would have access to adequate and affordable coverage. senator tim kaine was the democratic presidential candidate in 2016. so you saw your colleagues call this idea that there s now protections for folks with pre-existing conditions garbage. are they right? chris, this does not protect people with pre-existing conditions and that s one of the three horrible aspects of the graham/cassidy bill. let s talk about it. they are saying, no, we protect you. but states get the right to waive essential health benefits which right now they can not waive. they have to be provided. so you could basically get a policy written on somebody with diabetes. we can get you a policy but it
doesn t cover insulin. i m a woman, i d like maternity care. we re going to write you a policy, it just doesn t cover ma teer maternt care. you ought to be able to get coverage that includes coverage for your condition but the waiver of essential health benefits allows states to write you a policy that doesn t even cover the condition that you have and that s why the bill flunks the kimmel test and everybody with a pre-existing condition is scared to death about what this bill would mean. i want to give you an argument which is that in order to get the waiver, the state has to certify that people have access to affordable care. that s what you saw senator cassidy talking about. do you think that essentially won t mean anything when implemented? chris hayes, a state would say that and then it would be up to tom price, who hates the affordable care act, who hates medicaid, who is against all of