If Senate is forced to vote this week, Ron Johnson is out on GOP new health care bill

 Wisconsin Sen. goes from undecided Sunday to out by Monday evening.

Sunday, Ron Johnson was on Meet the Press. The Republican Senator from Wisconsin wasn’t quite taking a stand for or against the new GOP health care bill called the Better Care Reconciliation Act.

(Watch full interview here – shouldn’t be any ads)

Early Monday, Johnson wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times called “Where the Senate health care bill fails,” and all but made his case against the Senate’s new version of the bill but still didn’t unequivocally take a stance.

Monday night, CNN’s Dana Bash tweeted Johnson would vote against the bill, but only if GOP leadership insists on proceeding with a vote this week.

But, back to his op-ed piece, it seems like the current version of the bill is pretty far from where Johnson would like to see health care coverage.

Some highlights of that piece include:

-Our priority should be to bring relief, and better, less expensive care, to millions of working men and women. Unfortunately, the Senate Republican alternative, unveiled last week, doesn’t appear to come close to addressing their plight.

-Layer upon layer of laws, rules and regulations have made our health care-financing system a complex mess, separating patients from direct payment for health care. As a result, patients neither know nor care what things cost. We have virtually eliminated the power of consumer-driven, free-market discipline from one-sixth of our economy.

-The primary goals of any health care reform should be to restrain (if not lower) costs while improving quality, access and innovation. This is exactly what consumer-driven, free-market competition does in other areas of our economy. Look no further than how laser eye surgery went from exotic to affordable during the years it was not covered by most insurance.

-Washington believes that the solution to every problem is more money. But throwing more money at insurers won’t fix the lack of consumer-driven competition, combined with government mandates that artificially drive up the cost of care and insurance.

Also on Monday, Johnson and Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin received a letter from the Wisconsin Medical Society (WMS), urging they “prioritizing patients,” while considering how to vote on the health care bill.

President of the WMS, Dr. Noel Deep, wrote that it is “critical that our citizens have affordable, high quality health care coverage.” 

WMS has 12,500 members is is the largest association of medical doctors in the state and has been a source of health policy leadership since 1841.

Deep also told WIZM on Monday that “if we are going to be capped and medicaid funding is cut, it is going to impact our citizens. These are the people who are the most vulnerable – our oldest, our poorest and sickest – and these are the people who most need that.”

The biggest news that dropped Monday, came in the early evening when the Congressional Budget Office released its report on the bill.

The bipartisan group concluded that 22 million would lose coverage by 2026 – down from 23 million – but of those, 15 million would lose coverage by next year.

Some of the other news surrounding the report included that insurance costs would rise 280 percent for elderly, low-income people over the decade.

Under the Affordable Care Act, 64-year-olds making $26,500 a year are on track to pay $1,700 in annual premiums in 2026. Under the Senate’s version of Trumpcare, they’d pay $6,500, according to the Washington Post.

It also reported that older people will pay more for less.