The pre-existing condition smokescreen

In a snappy summary by Axios's David Nather of  the latest AHCA stall-out, this caught my eye:

The holdouts are mainly worried about weakening coverage for sick people. Rep. Ryan Costello of Pennsylvania: "Protections for those with pre-existing conditions without contingency and affordable access to coverage for every American remain my priorities for advancing healthcare reform, and this bill does not satisfy those benchmarks for me."

What this tells me is that the moderates will ultimately go along with ending the ACA Medicaid expansion and girdling all federal Medicaid spending with per capita caps.  I have long worried that Republican relative moderates will go squish on Medicaid if AHCA damage to the individual market is moderated past a certain threshold.

Now more than ever, the bottom line remains what Andy Slavitt said it was two months ago:

Squish!

The meme that Republican senators in states that have embraced the ACA Medicaid expansion will block the House repeal bill from passing substantially as is and save the expansion continues. Here's Politico's Burgess Everett with news of a closed-door meeting in Nevada:

Sen. Dean Heller panned House Speaker Paul Ryan's bill to repeal and replace Obamacare during a closed meeting with constituents on Saturday, according to audio obtained by POLITICO.

The remarks by Heller, the most vulnerable GOP senator on the ballot next year, are another sign of the difficult prospects the House bill faces in the other chamber. Already, more than a half-dozen senators have criticized the bill, and Republicans can afford to lose only two votes.

Hail defender! As Nevada's Republican governor, Brian Sandoval, boasted in a letter to the House leadership in January, Nevada has slashed its uninsured rate almost in half since ACA enactment, from 23% to 12% -- mainly through the Medicaid expansion, which has increased Medicaid enrollment by 288,000 since September 2013 in a state with 2.5 million residents. Plenty to defend!

So what is Heller's promise to Nevadans? Back to Politico: