GOP loses enough senators to sink its current health-care bill

by Dramelin 7:30 PM 0 comments

Two more Republican senators said Monday they will oppose the current Republican health-care bill — enough to doom its passage, for now.
In messages posted to Twitter, Sens.
Jerry Moran, R-Ks.
, and Mike Lee, R-Utah, became the third and fourth GOP senators to say they would not support their party`s Obamacare replacement plan as written.
They said they would not even back a motion to proceed — a procedural vote that would start debate on the bill.
The GOP, which holds 52 seats in the Senate, had already seen two defections and could not afford a third.
Their opposition marks just the latest setback to the GOP`s effort to repeal and replace Obamacare, a Republican campaign promise for most of the last decade that has stalled multiple times this year amid party divisions.
The GOP chose to address the health-care overhaul before it took on tax reform, another key campaign plank, and every setback is seen as delaying the party`s broader agenda.
Senate Republicans released a revised Obamacare replacement bill last week, hoping to win over both conservative and moderate holdouts who opposed an earlier version of the plan.
But two GOP senators — Rand Paul of Kentucky and Susan Collins of Maine — almost immediately opposed it, while several others expressed skepticism.
This story is developing.
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