Health care bill may get vote next week
Mcconnell says draft will be ready Thursday
WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans steered Tuesday toward a potential showdown vote on their long-awaited health care bill next week.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell, R-KY., said he expected to have a draft of the bill ready Thursday.
“We have to act, and we are,” McConnell said on the Senate floor.
Later, he simply chortled when asked if he was confident the measure would pass, a victory that would elude him if just three of the 52 GOP senators voted no.
Mcconnell’s ability to assess and line up votes is considered masterful, and he’s eager to pass legislation fulfilling a keystone campaign promise of President Donald Trump and countless GOP congressional candidates.
But underscoring the uncertainty he faces, senators from both ends of his party’s spectrum were grumbling about the bill’s expected contents and the clandestine way it’s being crafted.
“It’s apparently being written by a small handful of staffers for members of the Republican leadership,” said conservative Sen. Mike Lee, R-utah, using a Facebook video for an unusually public swipe at GOP leaders.
Though a member of the 13-senator working group Mcconnell had tasked with piecing legislation together, Lee said he’s not seen the emerging bill and “whole-heartedly” shares the frustration of constituents unhappy over the secrecy. He said senators should have seen the measure “weeks ago” if the chamber is voting next week, the goal of top Republicans.
Aides and lobbyists said they expected the GOP bill to provide health care tax credits linked to people’s incomes, not their ages like the House-passed measure, and to impose spending limits on the growth of the federal-state Medicaid program for the poor that would tighten further by the mid-2020s.
Another possibility was letting states drop some coverage requirements Obama’s law imposes on insurers, they said.