Senate health bill loses critical GOP support, appears dead as drafted
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Some moderate Republicans aren’t OK with revisions to the Senate’s health care bill because of prospective cuts to Medicaid.
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Two Republican senators announced Monday night that they would vote against the revised Senate bill to repeal and replace Obamacare, leaving Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., without enough support to bring the bill to the floor.
Sens. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, both tweeted that they would not support bringing the bill to the floor, a procedural motion that requires 50 votes. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has long been an opponent of the bill because it leaves portions of the Affordable Care Act in place, and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, announced last week that she would vote against it.
With only 52 Republicans in the Senate and unanimous Democratic opposition, any more than two GOP defections would sink the bill.
McConnell had to scrap an earlier planned vote before the July Fourth recess and redrafted the bill, hoping to lure enough support to pass it with no Democratic votes. He had warned that if the new bill could not pass, he may have to simply turn to Democrats to work on repairing the existing law.
In a statement, Lee said “In addition to not repealing all of the Obamacare taxes, (the bill) doesn’t go far enough in lowering premiums for middle class families; nor does it create enough free space from the most costly Obamacare regulations.â€
Senate leaders unveiled a revised bill last week that would allow the sale of cheap, bare-bones insurance plans in an attempt to draw enough conservative support to pass the measure to replace Obamacare.
At the same time, the bill tried to appeal to moderates by increasing funding to fight opioid addiction from $2 billion in the original bill to $45 billion in the latest draft.
However, those changes have failed to generate much enthusiasm among a group of about 10 Republicans who had also been reluctant to support the earlier version.
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The House narrowly approved a health care bill in May to replace the Affordable Care Act — a key campaign promise made by Republicans in last fall’s elections. But senators quickly rejected the House legislation in favor of crafting their own bill.
President Trump initially celebrated passage of the House bill, but he later denounced it as “mean” and urged the Senate to make it more “generous.”Â
The Congressional Budget Office had estimated in May that the House-passed bill would leave 23 million more Americans without insurance by 2026. The original Senate health care bill would have increased the number of Americans without health insurance by 22 million by 2026, according to the CBO. The non-partisan office was scheduled to release a score of the revised Senate bill early this week.
The Senate has struggled with two competing ideological mandates. For conservatives, the primary goal was to repeal Obamacare; the mandates it established for individuals to obtain and insurers to provide policies; and the taxes that provided subsidies for those who could not afford it. But moderates blanched at the potential for reducing coverage for poor and elderly constituents, and some opposed the bill’s language stripping Planned Parenthood of federal funding.
It is not clear what next steps are available for Republicans. Some conservatives have pushed for a return to legislation President Obama vetoed in 2016 that would have simply repealed the law, creating an opportunity to build a new system in its place.
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Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana floated an idea last week to leave the Obamacare taxes in place but turn the money over to the states and let them structure their own systems.
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Graham raised the idea again in a series of tweets Monday night.
Democrats immediately began celebrating the latest setback for a bill they have vowed to fight tooth and nail.
I’m delighted to see the disastrous Republican health care plan won’t succeed – a victory for the millions who stood up and fought back.
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) July 18, 2017
But some Democrats urged caution, noting that Republicans have been trying to repeal the bill since it passed in 2010 and are unlikely to just give up.