September 26, 2017

Graham-Cassidy Is Dead, and Obamacare Is Alive

Republicans won’t vote on repealing Obamacare. For now.

Ulrich Stamm/ZUMA

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Republicans are giving up on their latest effort to repeal Obamacare. During their caucus lunch Tuesday afternoon, Republican leaders decided that the bill, known as Graham-Cassidy, will not be brought up for a vote this week. “We’ve made the decision since we don’t have the votes, we’ll postpone that vote,” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said Tuesday. That puts an end to GOP’s hopes for repealing the Affordable Care Act and gutting Medicaid—at least for the moment.

Republicans faced a September 30 deadline if they wanted to use a procedure called reconciliation, which would allow the Senate to avoid a Democratic filibuster and pass a bill with only 50 votes. But while Graham-Cassidy is dead for the moment, Republicans could still revive the proposal—or pursue a different Obamacare replacement—by including reconciliation in their 2018 budget, which several GOP senators are already calling for. But keeping the reconciliation option open for 2018 would force Republicans to tackle health care and tax reform together, which would make the already complex tax debate even more difficult.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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