Senate puts off health care vote
GOP leader suffers setback as action stayed to after July 4
WASHINGTON — Senate Republican leaders abruptly shelved their longsought health care overhaul Tuesday, asserting they can still salvage it but raising new doubts about whether President Donald Trump and the Republicans will ever deliver on their promises to repeal and replace “Obamacare.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced at a closed-door senators’ lunch a delay for any voting. His action amounts to a stinging setback for the longtime Senate leader who had developed the legislation largely in secret as Trump hung back in deference.
Now Trump seems likely to push into the discussion more directly, and he immediately invited Senate Republicans to the White House. But the message he delivered to them before reporters were ushered out of the room was not entirely hopeful.
“This will be great if we get it done, and if we don’t get it done it’s just going to be something that we’re not going to like, and that’s OK and I understand that very well,” he told the senators, who surrounded him in the East Room. Most wore grim expressions.
Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida said that in the private meeting that followed, the president spoke of “the costs of failure, what it would mean to not get it done — the view that we would wind up in a situation where the markets will collapse and Republicans will be blamed for it and then potentially have to fight off an effort to expand to single payer at some point.”
The bill has many critics and few outspoken fans on Capitol Hill. It was short of support heading toward a critical procedural vote on Wednesday, and prospects for changing that are uncertain.
McConnell promised to revisit the legislation after Congress’ July 4 recess.
“It’s a big complicated subject, we’ve got a lot discussions going on, and we’re still optimistic we’re going to get there,” McConnell told reporters after the lunch.
McConnell has scant margin for error in the closely divided Senate, and the legislation to eliminate Obamacare’s mandates and unwind its Medicaid expansion has shed support practically from the moment it was unveiled last week. By Tuesday morning, at least five GOP senators had announced their opposition to a procedural vote on the bill, and after McConnell announced the delay several more went public with their criticism.
McConnell can lose only two senators from his 52member caucus and still pass the bill, with Vice President Mike Pence to cast a tie-breaking vote. Democrats are unanimously opposed.
Medical groups are nearly unanimously opposed, too, along with the AARP, though the U.S. Chamber of Commerce supports the bill.
A number of GOP governors oppose the legislation, especially instates that have expanded the Medicaid program for the poor under former President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act.
Conservatives such as Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah argue that the legislation doesn’t go far enough in repealing Obamacare. But moderates such as Dean Heller of Nevada and Susan Collins of Maine criticize the bill as overly punitive in throwing people off insurance rolls and limiting benefits paid by Medicaid, covering nursing home care for seniors as well as care for many poor Americans.
GOP defections increased after the Congressional Budget Office said Monday the measure would leave 22 million more people uninsured by 2026.
McConnell told senators he wanted them to agree to a final version of the bill before the end of this week so they could seek a new analysis by the budget office. He said thatwould give lawmakers time to finish when they return to the Capitol for a three-week stretch in July before Congress’ summer break.
The budget office report said the Senate bill’s coverage losses would especially affect people between 50 and 64 and with incomes around $30,300 for an individual.
The Senate plan would end the tax penalty the law imposes on people who don’t buy insurance, in effect erasing Obamacare’s so-called individual mandate, and on larger businesses that don’t offer coverage to workers.
It would let states ease Obamacare’s requirements that insurers cover certain specified services like substance abuse treatments. It also would eliminate $700 billionworth of taxes over a decade, largely on wealthier people and medical companies — money that Obama’s law used to expand coverage.
It would cut Medicaid, which provides health insurance to over 70 million poor and disabled people, by $772 billion through 2026 by capping its overall spending and phasing out Obama’s expansion of the program.