The revised Senate bill combines elements of the second and third GOP health care alternatives described in a post earlier in the week. The Obamacare plans will clearly become an unusual form of high risk pool, while the treatment of the unregulated plans resembles in some respects the catastrophic insurance alternative.
The losers from the new bill, using the old Senate plan as a baseline, would be wealthy people (who are losing their tax cut), people with pre-existing conditions (forced into a high risk pool with rapidly escalating prices), and anyone who picks an unregulated plan and unexpectedly requires lots of expensive medical care. The winners are healthy young people who can buy cheap unregulated catastrophic plans at a lower cost than before. People requiring Medicaid are treated like dirt under both the old and the new bill.
Will it pass? As I projected weeks ago, Collins and Paul will vote no. McConnell is apparently touting the Medicaid cuts to the conservatives, while telling the moderates that they will never happen in the real world. If he manages to get 50 votes with that amazingly cynical approach, it will probably be a fitting end to a Kafkaesque story.