GOP senators blink on a big chance to repeal ‘Obamacare’

WASHINGTON » After seven years of emphatic campaign promises, Senate Republicans demonstrated Wednesday they don’t have the stomach to repeal “Obamacare” when it really counts, as the Senate voted 55-45 to reject legislation undoing major portions of Barack Obama’s law without replacing it.

Seven Republicans joined all Democrats in rejecting an amendment by Rand Paul of Kentucky that would have repealed most of former President Obama’s health care law, with a two-year delay but no replacement. Congress passed nearly identical legislation in 2015 and sent it to Obama, who vetoed it.

Yet this time, with a president in the White House who says he’s itching to sign the bill, the measure failed on the Senate floor. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that repealing “Obamacare” without replacing it would cost more than 30 million Americans their insurance coverage.