Republicans in Congress are bumping up against a harsh reality: “Repeal Obamacare” might sound good on the campaign trail, but it doesn’t look so good when you find out who gets hurt.

Some Senate Republicans are trying to fix that problem by making sure that no one can see their repeal effort. A group of 13 senators is working in secret to design their response to the House Republicans’ bill, which was passed last month without a single Democratic vote. And Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has arranged for it to go straight to the floor of the Senate, where it would need only 50 votes (plus the vice president) to pass, pushing through a major reform of one-sixth of the U.S. economy without the opposition party or the public knowing anything about its contents.

By contrast, the Affordable Care Act, which has been attacked for being rushed and overly partisan, was subject to six months of hearings before several committees after it was introduced, and was debated on the floor of the Senate for 25 straight days before it passed. No one outside the group of Republican senators crafting this bill has any idea of what’s in it.

The door to the hearing room might be closed, but, by now, everyone should be able to see what’s going on. If the senators thought most Americans would like their bill, they would be showing it to us. The fact that they don’t want us to know what they are up to tells us all we need to know.

Fortunately, Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins is well positioned to do something about it.

Collins has been a leading advocate for a deliberate health care reform process focused on giving more people access to care. Back in January, she was one of the senators who spoke out against repealing the Affordable Care Act without having a replacement ready to go, and that was a position that carried the day.

We are encouraged to hear her say she would not support a bill unless it’s been evaluated by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, and that she favors an open and bipartisan process. We hope she keeps speaking out and influencing the process in a way that would benefit Mainers.

Although there is no Senate bill yet, we know they started with the one passed by the House last month. The senators could make major improvements to that piece of legislation and still end up with something that would devastate families struggling to pay for health care

According to the CBO, the House bill would cost 23 million Americans their health coverage, and despite winning the support of 2nd District Rep. Bruce Poliquin, it looks as if it was specifically designed to hurt a place like Maine.

The House bill would reduce insurance subsidies for older, lower-income, rural Americans, increasing subsidies for younger and richer people who live in cities where competition among providers makes health care less expensive.

It would put the Medicaid program, an essential service for people in nursing homes or who have disabilities, on a glide path to inadequacy, leaving state budgets in shambles.

And it would stop federal payments to Planned Parenthood for preforming checkups, sexually transmitted disease tests or cancer screenings – not because that would reduce the cost of health care, but because some members of Congress want to interfere with women who choose to exercise their right to end a pregnancy with an abortion.

The House bill would help some people – the wealthiest Americans who would benefit from a massive tax cut, said Maine’s other senator, independent Angus King, in a floor speech Wednesday. “It’s a gigantic transfer of wealth – probably one of the greatest in a short time in recent American history – where you have millions of people across the country who have health insurance under the Affordable Care Act and are protected under Medicaid and Medicaid expansion, and you’re taking that away,” King said.

The House bill is not a starting point, it’s a dead end. The Senate should reject it and start over – in public and with both parties at the table. If Collins and other Republicans stand up now, that’s the kind of process that could get underway.

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