GOP Opponents Deal Devastating Blow to McConnell’s Health Bill

by Dramelin 8:00 PM 0 comments

Two Republican senators said Monday night they oppose Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s proposal to replace Obamacare, effectively killing the current version of the legislation.
Senators Mike Lee and Jerry Moran said in statements they won’t support the Republican measure because it doesn’t go far enough to address the rising cost of health care.
They joined fellow GOP Senators Rand Paul and Susan Collins in announcing opposition to the proposal, leaving McConnell two votes short of the number needed to advance the measure amid unified Democratic resistance.
“We should not put our stamp of approval on bad policy,” Moran of Kansas said in a statement on Twitter.
He criticized the way the health-care bill was written through a “closed-door process” and said the Senate must “start fresh” with open hearings and debate.
Lee of Utah said the current version doesn’t repeal Obamacare taxes and regulations or lower premiums.
The defection of the two Tea Party-backed senators is a stunning blow to McConnell and President Donald Trump, who campaigned on a promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which he called a disaster.
"Republicans should just REPEAL failing ObamaCare now & work on a new Healthcare Plan that will start from a clean slate.
Dems will join in!" Trump wrote on Twitter.
McConnell couldn’t afford to lose any more Republican votes after Paul and Collins, and the near-simultaneous statements from Moran and Lee suggested a coordinated attempt to make sure neither would be singled out as the senator who dashed the leader’s plans.
Both senators don’t face re-election until 2022, making it hard for Trump to retaliate against them.
Now that the current bill can’t move forward, it’s unclear whether Republican leaders will keep trying.
A spokesman for McConnell didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
A White House official said that inaction isn’t an option and that Trump is ready to sign a bill to repeal Obamacare.
No Clear Path There’s no guarantee, however, that another rewrite of the bill would fare better, since there is no clear path between the conservative and moderate wings seeking to pull the bill in opposite directions.
A sizable group of Republicans from Medicaid expansion states had yet to commit to the bill either, and Lee’s push for a broader repeal of Obamacare’s insurance regulations risked pushing away the votes of senators like Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who have been among the most vocal in pushing to continue providing protections for people with pre-existing conditions.
Senators already are talking about a new approach to health legislation, with Lindsey Graham of South Carolina tweeting about his latest proposal with Cassidy to keep most of the Affordable Care Act’s taxes in place but give states far more freedom on what to do with the money.
McConnell’s plan already was teetering on the brink after Senator John McCain’s unexpected surgery late Friday left him one short of the votes needed to start debate this week.
The majority leader had said the bill wouldn’t be considered until McCain returned.
Republicans control the Senate 52-48.
McCain, in Arizona to recover from the operation, issued a statement saying the GOP shouldn’t repeat Democrats’ strategy of passing Obamacare without any votes from the other party.
Congress must "hold hearings, receive input from members of both parties, and heed the recommendations of our nation’s governors" to pass a health care plan, McCain said.
House conservatives Monday immediately renewed calls for both chambers to enact a straight repeal of Obamacare, and leave the replacement debate for later -- a strategy almost certain to fail.
‘Full Repeal Bill’ “Expect growing calls from conservatives for Congress to take up full repeal bill that passed under Obama,” Alyssa Farah, a spokeswoman for the conservative House Freedom Caucus, wrote on Twitter.
Lee and Moran’s statements came shortly after Trump met privately to discuss strategy with a small group of Republican senators, including other members of McConnell’s leadership team.
Trump said in a July 12 interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network’s Pat Robertson that if the measure didn’t pass the Senate, "It would very bad.
I will be very angry about it and a lot of people will be very upset.
" McConnell spoke of the potential of moving to a scaled-back, bipartisan version of health legislation last month when an earlier version of his GOP-only bill collapsed because it lacked enough support.
He told a Rotary Club in Glasgow, Kentucky, that if Republicans can’t “agree on an adequate replacement, then some kind of action with regard to the private health insurance market must occur.