Collins Appears to Kill Health Bill After Graham and Cassidy Defend It

Protesters in pristine pulmonary health didn’t stop chanting until chairman Orrin Hatch asked “Where’s the damn police?” and the damn police showed up. Sen. Lindsey Graham traveled miles off script and actually had saliva on his lips as he vowed to thrust “a stake in the heart of single-payer health care.” Most of the senators inside the committee room raised their voices at one point or another—including Sen. Tom Carper, a mild-mannered senior Democrat who typically speaks unperturbed.

If there’s only going to be one hearing about Graham-Cassidy, you might as well get all your emotions out at once.

Graham and Sen. Bill Cassidy, the two men primarily behind the congressional GOP’s last-gasp effort at Obamacare repeal, testified in defense of their legislation Monday before an unusually feisty Senate Finance Committee. The proceedings were delayed 15 minutes by demonstrators in the audience who were pulled from the room by authorities before Hatch, the 83-year-old dean of the upper chamber, gaveled the session back to order. Graham kept the atmosphere hot, however, with a fiery opening statement that deviated substantially from his prepared remarks. He called his bill “not the last chance, but the best chance” at undoing and sort-of replacing the Affordable Care Act.

“And to my friends to the left, I will do everything I can to stop and put a stake in the heart of single-payer health care,” he said, bobbing his head to the beat of the words. “You don’t like Obamacare. You don’t think it’s big-government enough. I am here to stop you. You care as much as I do about health care, but going beyond Obamacare is a nightmare for this country. It will ruin health care and bankrupt the American people.”

The measure is seen by some conservatives as the way to prevent further government involvement in the private health insurance market, since it would authorize Washington to disburse hundreds of billions of dollars to the states for them to establish their own systems. But Cassidy, who has devoted more time to selling the bill’s substance than its political ramifications, tried talking about the legislation’s details in often contentious exchanges with Democrats.