Media thinks it's news that the Senate won't just vote on the House version of AHCA

Maybe it's more accurate to say they want you to think it's news. Maybe some people are under the impression after yesterday's House vote that ObamaCare is already repealed, or that Senate passage of the AHCA is a mere formality. The media would love for people to be operating off that starting premise, because that sets them up to pelt you with the sobering bad news of how it's just not going to be that easy. Why, the Senate won't even vote on the House bill! They'll write their own!

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This is not going to be easy

Um, yeah. That's how it always works with major legislation, especially when the issue at hand is as complicated as this one is. There are going to be factions in the Senate every bit as difficult to reconcile as those in the House - and anyone who didn't understand this simply doesn't know very much about how these things work. This is not going to be easy, and it never was:

“At this point, there seem to be more questions than answers about its consequences,” Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said in a statement of the House bill. Collins and a group of other Senate Republicans had already expressed concerns about the original version of the House bill, initially floated in March. But the new version of the House bill, which contains added provisions that would ease requirements that insurers cover pre-existing conditions, does little to assuage the senators’ initial concerns. Senate leaders said Thursday that while they will review the House bill, they will also write their own version of a health care overhaul. But the differences among individual senators, and the fact that there can be no more than two Republican defections for the bill to pass – underscores the challenge the Senate has ahead of it in coming up with a bill that satisfies enough holdouts. Conservative GOP Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Mike Lee of Utah and Ted Cruz of Texas all tweeted after the original House bill’s introduction that they would oppose anything short of a full repeal of Obamacare. They also said the House bill's tax credit structure to help people pay for coverage amounted to a new entitlement, too similar to the subsidies available under Obamacare.

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The latest House bill would provide tax credits between $2,000 and $14,000 a year for individuals who don’t get insurance coverage from an employer or the governments. The tax credits would be based on age instead of income, increasing as a person gets older. After the House vote Thursday, Paul said he opposed the House bill because it guarantees “the fundamental promise of Obamacare kept.” Cruz told ABC News earlier in the week that he still has “a number of concerns” about the bill, “and I think many senators do.”

Cruz and Lee are going to hold out for a more conservative bill. Collins and Lisa Murkowski will hold out for a more centrist bill

Cruz and Lee are going to hold out for a more conservative bill. Collins and Lisa Murkowski will hold out for a more centrist bill. I wouldn't be surprised if Rand Paul simply votes no regardless of what's in the bill, unless it says, "Government must never play any role in health care ever again." So getting to 50 yes votes out of a Republican majority of 52 will require conservatives like Cruz and Lee to make some kind of deal with the moderates. I don't think that's going to happen easily. And once it gets done, either or both sides of the negotiation will probably be called sellouts by their followers. And at that point, it's going to be very difficult to get a conference report that can pass both the House and the Senate. All you have to do is look at how fragile the 217-vote majority in the House was, and realize that the slightest deviance to the left or to the right is likely to either peel off nervous moderates or cost you determined conservatives.

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But none of this should be surprising, and the media are being very disingenuous

But none of this should be surprising, and the media are being very disingenuous in presenting this as if it's unusual. Major legislation always encounters difficulties like this. ObamaCare itself was the product of many promises, compromises and backroom deals in order to get enough Democrats on board to pass it. Just look up the Cornhusker Kickback for an example of some of the more egregious dealmaking that went on to get to a final yes on ObamaCare back in 2010. I'll tell you right now that some of what will go on to cobble together a majority in the Senate you will not like. People will be promised things they shouldn't get, and in the end a lot of us will feel like the final product wasn't even good enough to justify the bribes that were given. You'd like to think the Republicans will be less brazen than the Democrats were in 2010 about cutting deals like this to buy people's votes. I don't think they will. I think it will be just as bad or worse. Why? Because for the most part, Democrats are a pretty monolithic group. They have small differences, but for the most part they all believe in big government and want as much of it as they can get. Republicans aren't like that. Some Republicans only give lip service to disliking big government, while others really hate it. Some Republicans are cared of the media - or as in the case of John McCain, love being the media's favorite Republican - while others treat the media as the enemies they are. I disagree with those who say most Republicans secretly like ObamaCare and want to keep it, but I do think it's true that there are enough of those to keep you short of 50 votes to pass repeal - unless some palms are greased. That sucks. But ObamaCare sucks more. I wish we had better Republican senators so this could be easier. But you go to war with the Senate you have. Even so, nothing that's happening now is a surprise. The Senate was always going to write its own bill, and there were always going to be difficult negotiations ahead. Strap in. The House vote is a necessary and welcome first step, but that's all it is. Realizing that just means you're paying attention.

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