This morning, U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue, who just yesterday announced the organization’s support for the GOP’s health care repeal bill, hinted that his group is more interested in tweaking the measure than eliminating it outright. Asked why he was endorsing a measure that had no chance of becoming law, Donohue reminded MSNBC host Chuck Todd that the Chamber spent “a fortune and a great deal of our intellectual commitment to make that bill not happen” and said that repeal was a way to “get everybody’s attention”:

DONOHUE: We’re going to support them on some of the things they’re gonna have to do to work out the health care deal, because I think there is a way to get there. We’re going to support a vote against it…and our release, will say ‘and here are the five things we then have to get together and fix.’

TODD: Well, they seem to be on the same page with you on this 1099 issue.

DONOHUE: Exactly, they’ve already issued 220 exemptions because they’ve figured out it doesn’t work. We’re going to work with these guys on a lot of the issues that are going to have to be dealt with.

Watch it:

But, Chamber Vice President and Chief Operating Officer David Chavern suggested yesterday on CSPAN’s Washington Journal, “We really need to focus on the more important thing, which is how can we fix what is passed and what may we be able to add to it to improve it.”

Even if Donohue was not able to ultimately kill the measure, the “fortune” the Chamber spent on T.V. ads and lobbying helped move public opinion to the right and is at least partly responsible for the unpopularity of the measure. As Chavern put it, “it’s no secret that ultimately we lost….but at the end of the day, I think we did talk to the public a lot about what was wrong with that bill. I think there is much broader understanding about what’s wrong. So would we do it again? Yes.” Indeed, it’s because of the Chamber’s success in molding opposition to the measure that Democrats may be more willing to “fix” things like the 1099 provision (which does seem like a burdensome requirement) and soften some of the employer responsibility penalties.

Yesterday, the Kaiser Family Foundation released its 50-state survey of Medicaid programs around the country and found that despite tight budgets, “nearly all states maintained or made targeted expansions or improvements in their Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Programs (CHIP) eligibility and enrollment rules in 2010.” “This stability in large part reflects the temporary fiscal relief for Medicaid provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) that was tied to requirements for states to maintain Medicaid coverage,” Kaiser concluded. Arizona — which has been criticized for cutting mental health programs and transplant coverage — was the only state to cut health insurance for children and one of two (along with New Jersey) to reduce services for low-income families.

The state has not enrolled any new children into its CHIP program since establishing an enrollment freeze on January 1, 2010, “saving $18 million to help balance last year’s budget. Enrollment has since shrunk almost in half, from 40,000 to an estimated 26,000 as of Oct. 1.” The state has also ended coverage for seven types of organ transplants in October 1, which has contributed to the deaths of at least two Arizonans and is leading transplant patients to leave the state.

In March, the Arizona legislature completely eliminated funding for KidsCare (the state’s CHIP program) to help close the state’s $5 billion budget gap. It restored funding several months later following the passage of health reform — which requires states that want to continue receiving federal health care funds to maintain eligibility in Medicaid and CHIP — but was allowed to retain its CHIP enrollment freeze throughout 2010 because it already was in effect and operational before the law went into effect.

Arizona has also reduced funding to the Department of Health Services by $36 million (37% of total budget), severely undermining its mental health programs. According to the Arizona Republic, “residents with mental illnesses who don’t qualify for the state Medicaid program are receiving “only basic doctor visits and generic medicine. People contemplating suicide will be directed to a crisis hotline, but the state will no longer pay for them to be hospitalized.”