After a dreamy fling with Bernie's single-payer plan, Democrat pols and pundits are back in full battle mode to "save Obamacare."

Just when the Democrats thought "the battle to protect Obamacare was won," and they could sign on to visions of "Medicare for all," the Senate Republicans' Graham-Cassidy Obamacare repeal bill, which in a nutshell would "take the money and power out of Washington and send it back to the states," threatens to derail the Democrats' single-payer dreams.

Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer's "red siren moment" over the threat from the latest repeal bill has Democrats scrambling back to the breach to "refocus the party's base on the possibility that repeal could become law," as Politico reports: 

• Senator Schumer (D-N.Y.): "This is a red siren moment for the entire country."
• Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.), who last week co-sponsored the Bernie Sanders single-payer bill, "slammed the bill as 'an atrocity,'" adding that there is "just nothing defensible about this bill."
• Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) says he "expects to have a full quiver of amendments ready aimed at derailing the Cassidy-Graham bill, should it advance."

The New York Times predictably sounds the alarm in dire terms:

Like a bad sequel to a terrible movie, a proposal whose main architects are Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina would in many ways be worse than bills that came before.

... This is not an idle threat. President Trump wants this bill passed by the end of next week.

... It is hard to overstate the cruelty of the Graham-Cassidy bill.

The Times even finds a sinister motive in the Graham-Cassidy block-grant formula for "equalizing the treatment of Medicaid Expansion and Non-expansion States":

Worse, the formula for determining state grants would penalize the 31 states that expanded Medicaid under the A.C.A. so as to provide more money to the 19 states that did not. This is a cynical attempt to win votes by taking money from generous states that are more likely to be governed by Democrats and giving some of it to representatives of stingier states that are more likely to elect Republicans.

Reliable liberal pundit E.J. Dionne, writing at realclearpolitics.com, echoes the dire assessment – the bill "would tear apart the existing system and replace it with a block grant to the states":

In fact, it would be disastrous. In certain respects, it's even worse than the earlier repeal measures, which at least kept some of the structure of Obamacare's subsidies in place. This bill would simply blow them up.

... All who care about the expansion of health care coverage need to focus their energies on defeating this latest attack on Obamacare. However we eventually arrive at universal coverage, which we must, it will be far easier to get there by building on the ACA.

Mr. Dionne's fear that sending health care money and control back to the states poses a dire threat to his "universal coverage" is well founded.  Former senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), who, based on his past experience with welfare reform, which also devolved money and power back to the states, had a significant role in developing the Graham-Cassidy proposal, said in a Breitbart interview last month that the plan would "put a stake in the heart of single-payer health care," adding that once every state has its "own health care system, no way will the [federal] government be able to take it back."

Ovik Roy, writing at forbes.com, notes that Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has also said that "if you want a single-payer health care system, this is your worst nightmare. Bernie, this ends your dream."  But Mr. Roy adds a caveat to that thought:

This is factually untrue. Indeed, the Graham-Cassidy plan would turbocharge single-payer activity in blue states like California and New York, and even Bernie Sanders' Vermont. Today, under Obamacare, states are prohibited from introducing government-run "public option" coverage into their individual insurance exchanges. Graham-Cassidy would lift that restraint; indeed, states could use their new block grant dollars to replace their private insurance exchanges with single-payer Medicaid-like programs.

Given the renewed enthusiasm on the left for the abolition of private health insurance through single-payer systems, there can be little doubt that this is the direction that blue states will take under Graham-Cassidy.

Better to let California and New York, rather than the entire nation, serve as the laboratory for single-payer, but Mr. Roy suggests that it "would make more sense for the bill to enact guardrails that prohibit subsidies from going to government-run insurers."

A brief summary of the Graham-Cassidy bill, along with detailed explanations and charts, is found at Senator Bill Cassidy (R-La.)'s website.

While the White House has "launched a full-court press on Capitol Hill" for the repeal bill, as cnn.com reports, and "House Speaker Paul Ryan and the White House have informed Senate Republican leaders that they oppose" a competing plan to restore the Obamacare insurance subsidies, as politico.com reports, prospects for passing the bill remain uncertain.

With Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky opposed to the bill, the Republicans can afford to lose only one of three senators who remain in varying stages of indecision: Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and John McCain of Arizona.

As investors.com writes, "[t]o be sure, the chances of the Cassidy-Graham bill getting approved in the Senate are slim."

If Democrat reactions to this latest potential roadblock in the path of Bernie's single-payer health plan are any indication, the Republicans should pass the Graham-Cassidy repeal bill post-haste.

Former senator Santorum notes that "Winston Churchill said that 'America does the right thing after they have tried everything first.'"  Santorum's version regarding health care is that "Republicans have tried everything else first, and now we have the right thing to do."