More ominously, its Republican House and Senate foes oppose it for "opposing" REASONS: The 29 Republicans in the Houses self-proclaimed Freedom Caucus hate it because they want to simply repeal and NOT replace, while four Senate Republicans sent Ryan a letter stating refusal to vote for any bill that ends the Medicaid expansion after 2020. That is, 12% of the House GOP rejects the bill for doing too MUCH, while 8% of the Senate GOP rejects it for doing too LITTLE. That leaves Ryan (at least) 10 House and 3 Senate votes short of the bare majority he needs (presuming Pence broke any tie in its favor; OTOH, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) also opposes the bill for the same reason the Freedom Caucus does.)

McConnell did his part last week with the rare move of rushing (as much as the Senate CAN "rush" to place the House bill on the Senate docket for a vote before the Congressional Budget Office (which Republicans have controlled since 2010) could release the bad news about how many people would lose insurance if it passes, but, alas, that news came yesterday: The CBO says that if the bill passes 14 million Americans will immediately lose their insurance, and another 10 million within a decade. As usual, Trumps White House was quick to dispute that number: Trumps own internal analysis says 26 million people would lose their insurance under Ryan/Trumpcare.

Hence Political Wires Quote of the Day:

It is increasingly clear Collins sees herself playing the role Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith played to Sen. Joe McCarthy (i.e. publicly repudiating a vicious ruthless demagogue to save her party and country, in that order.) Regardless, that brings the total to SIX Republican senators who cannot stomach Ryancare.

Now, relying on the Senates budget reconciliation process to pass Ryancare with no opportunity to filibuster also lets the Senate amend it any and all ways 51 senators desire, but with the Freedom Caucus already rejecting the current bill, it is hard to imagine how a more "activist" or "socialist" Senate revision could change their minds. In counterpoint to Sen. Collins et al, Breitbart quotes Sarah Palin calling Ryancare "RINOcare" and "socialized medicine," pledging President Trump will "fix it." The problem with the second part of that "logic" is that just last week Trump told a White House Tea Party meeting that his "backup plan" is to let Obamneycare fail and blame Democrats.

Though Ryan laughed it off when a reporter asked last week, a growing number of journalists and analysts have noted that Ryancares plan to end healthcare subsidies for Trump voters while slashing taxes is little more than redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich. Trump may not have to worry about that until 2020, but Senators Dean Heller and Jeff Flake, along with 239 House Republicans, must worry about 2018, when they face midterm elections that have historically been brutal for the party of even wildly popular presidents like FDR and Reagan.

So I will delay in depth analysis of Ryancare until/unless it actually looks likely EITHER chamber of Congress (much less both) will pass it. Republican Congressmen are running scared, in many cases literally running AWAY from angry constituents. The people who gave us the Tea Party can dismiss that as "paid protesters," but not even they believe some mysterious Dem billionaire is paying thousands of people in 435 congressional districts (i.e. half a million people) to show up for hours, daily, for months, wrathfully demanding their representatives REPRESENT them.