SALT LAKE CITY — Sen. Mike Lee’s stand against Senate Republicans’ health care bill landed him in the spotlight for much of the past week.
Utah’s junior senator explained his position to various media outlets amid criticism from President Donald Trump, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and others over his holdout on the latest proposal. Some in the GOP establishment tagged him with being the Republican who stopped the Obamacare repeal.
“He was the key man this past week,” said Chris Karpowitz, co-director of BYU’s Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy.
Trump expressed dismay about several conservative senators — Lee among them — opposing the last version of the health care proposal. Hatch jumped on board, saying the Senate “blinked” and those senators would have to explain themselves to folks back home why they didn’t repeal Obamacare when they had the chance.
“I’m not being an absolutist,” Lee said in a Politico article, adding that he didn’t need 100 percent of the law to be repealed. “I’m a little frustrated by some who are eager and willing to call me out for saying this doesn’t go far enough in doing what we promised to do for seven years.”
Lee even mixed it up with Hatch in a testy exchange in the article.
“I don’t see him looking for a path to yes. It seems like he’s against everything right now,” Hatch said. “That’s the way it looks to me.”
Lee bristled at Hatch’s comments.
“I am stunned by that suggestion,” Lee told Politico. “I am surprised that he would purport to know what my thoughts and intents were, what I was thinking or intending. He could not be more wrong.”
Hatch and Lee have taken decidedly different approaches to health care reform and to the Trump presidency in general. But to have it play out publicly is “quite striking and quite unusual,” Karpowitz said.
It’s hard to give much credit to those saying Lee somehow favors Obamacare when he was an ardent opponent from the beginning, Karpowitz said. Lee, he said, is in a difficult spot when it comes to sticking to his conservative principles and getting to yes on a health care bill.
“He’s not a wheeler-dealer. He’s not someone who is deeply engaged in horse trading over votes,” Karpowitz said. “Instead, he tries to move forward without betraying those core principles he holds dearly.”
Lee told Fox News he could vote for the bill if it included his Consumer Freedom Amendment allowing insurance companies to sell any health coverage plan they want as long as they provide a plan that satisfies Obamacare mandates.
It’s time to offer people the chance to connect with willing insurers to buy the policy that’s right for them, he said.
“All things being equal, if they could get that, I could get to yes. Now, I speak only for myself. I control only my vote. But what I’m saying is, all things being equal, if they added that with those protections, the protections of the dual pool, the fully loaded Consumer Freedom Amendment, I could get to yes,” Lee said.
Karpowitz said trying to deregulate insurance markets in a way that will bring premiums down is complex. And when moderate Republicans are coming from a different perspective than Lee, it’s hard to find the sweet spot that gets everyone on board, he said.
On Wednesday, Trump hammered senators who opposed the health care bill and demanded the Senate pass legislation before recessing in August.
“Any senator who votes against starting debate is really telling America that you’re fine with Obamacare,” Trump said.
Earlier in the week, the president said the best option was to let Obamacare fail.
White House leadership on the issue has been inconsistent at best, Karpowitz said. Trump, he said, hasn’t shown a clear understanding of the policy choices, nor has he articulated guiding principles, and that sometimes leaves individual senators exposed.
“He seems to want to win more than he cares about the substance of the bill,” Karpowitz said.
Agree or disagree with him, Lee’s approach isn’t about winning but how to get the things he believes into the legislation, Karpowitz said.
Article source: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865685312/Sen-Mike-Lee-spends-past-week-in-eye-of-health-care-storm.html