Rand Paul accuses House Republicans of hiding 'ObamaCare Lite' replacement bill

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published 2 March 2017

House Republicans have drafted a new plan to repeal and replace ObamaCare, which they released Thursday to members and staffers of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The bill is apparently tucked away in a "dedicated reading room," one Republican told Bloomberg, and "nobody will be given copies" of the document. All the secrecy is apparently an attempt to guard against a repeat of last week, when an outdated draft of a House replacement plan leaked and was quickly criticized.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), however, is not sympathetic to the top-secret treatment. In an eight-tweet thread Thursday morning, Paul slammed the "lock-and-key" treatment of the bill, asking, "What is the House leadership trying to hide?"

Paul went on to speculate House Republicans don't want fellow lawmakers and their more ardent constituents to see the bill because it's a watered-down approach of the full repeal the GOP has been promising for years. Paul theorized the bill is simply "renaming and keeping parts of ObamaCare," and said "new entitlements and extending Medicaid expansion are not the full repeal we promised." Read his entire call for transparency here.