As Krugman points out, this is still a bill designed to reduce Medicaid funding to pre-Obamacare levels. All funded by giving tax breaks to the top 2%. But I believe the Cruz amendment makes it something infinitely worse than previous versions. The Cruz amendment is a dagger in the heart to "pre-existing condition" protections. But further, I am coming to believe the theory that all these Republican gyrations may be about much more. That they in fact are designed to keep the 98% slaves for their entire working lives. You need to stay at your same corporate job until you retire, don't innovate/don't go out on your own, accept what you are offered, and keep your mouth shut. Because if you don't, and if you get sick - which all of us eventually do - the conservative Republican oligarchs are going to make sure that you will lose your healthcare protections and possibly lose everything that you have worked a lifetime to accumulate. This as a consequence for your unwillingness to conform.

But taking off my tinfoil hat for a moment, whatever the real reasons behind the bill are, the effects it would have are certainly unnecessary and nightmarish. And I am sorry, but I really am coming to believe the Republicans behind it are - evil people.