Alexander, Corker should honor Howard Baker's legacy

• Howard Baker famously reminded his Senate colleagues: “The other guy might be right.”
• Erwin C. Hargrove is a professor of political science, emeritus, at Vanderbilt University.

As the U.S. Senate now prepares to decide the future of American health care, will Tennessee’s senators, Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker, provide the leadership the Senate so badly needs?

Alexander chairs the important Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Both men are heirs to the proud legacy of the late GOP Sen. Howard Baker, known for his statesmanship and ability to work on a bipartisan basis to achieve what was best for the American people. Will they follow his example?

The U.S. House of Representatives has passed the deeply unpopular American Health Care Act and sent it to the Senate. The AHCA is easily the most important piece of health legislation since the creation of Medicare 50 years ago. The bill repeals Obamacare. Even more importantly, the bill radically restructures Medicaid and cuts nearly a trillion dollars from that program.

Medicaid is our largest health insurance program and an essential safety net for over 60 million vulnerable Americans. Medicaid also provides critical funding for health-care infrastructure, especially in rural areas.

The AHCA will affect every American, some in profound ways. Nonpartisan groups like the American Medical Association, March of Dimes, American Cancer Society and AARP — to name only a few — oppose the bill because they say it hurts patients, including children with special medical needs, cancer survivors and the elderly.

In their public statements, Alexander and Corker have stressed for months the need for Congress to work deliberately for health reforms that will serve the interests of all Americans. When House Speaker Paul Ryan refused to talk with Democrats about AHCA, Senator Corker cautioned him that Congress could not achieve effective solutions without working on a bipartisan basis.

For that reason, it is worrisome that Alexander will not hold Health Committee hearings on the AHCA. The Senate leadership’s frankly stated reason is that it wants to exclude Democratic Senators and deny a public forum for criticism of the bill.

Instead, a small working group of other Republican Senators are tasked with putting together a revised version of the bill, with input only from the Senate’s 52 GOP members.

Bypassing the committee process marks an extraordinary departure from Senate traditions, especially for a bill of this importance. If bypassing committee hearings were only about excluding Democratic Senators, it might be tempting to dismiss it as just partisan political games. But the substitution of a closed group for an open committee process also ignores the voices of doctors, nurses and health experts, as well as the nonprofits that speak for the many different groups of Americans who will be affected by the Senate’s actions. The whole purpose of the committee process is to ensure that all views, especially critical views, are heard. Without committee hearings, Senators cannot fully understand the consequences of a bill before they vote on it. Short circuiting that process is a recipe for disaster.

Howard Baker famously reminded his Senate colleagues that respectful consideration of opposing viewpoints is essential, because “The other guy might be right.”

Senators Alexander and Corker should honor that legacy. They should make sure the Senate health committee holds the sort of fair and transparent hearings, and careful deliberations, that Senator Baker would expect.

Erwin C. Hargrove is aprofessor of political science, emeritus, at Vanderbilt University.