HEALTH BILL
and replace it,” Moran said in a statement. “This closeddoor process unfortunately has yielded the” Senate repeal bill, which he asserted “failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act or address health care’s rising costs.”
The two senators coordinated their statements Monday night to have maximum impact. Already two other Republicans, Susan Collins of Maine, a moderate, and Rand Paul of Kentucky, a conservative, had declared their opposition to the latest version of the Senate repeal bill, which was unveiled last week. That left Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, on a knife’s edge, unable to absorb a single other defection.
In his own statement, Lee said of the bill, “In addition to not repealing all of the Obamacare taxes, it doesn’t go far enough in lowering premiums for middle class families; nor does it create enough free space from the most costly Obamacare regulations.”
By jumping together, Moran and Lee ensured no one would be the definitive “no” vote.
Republican lawmakers have spent the last several months working to both repeal the law passed under President Barack Obama and pass an overhaul package.
With four solid votes against the bill, Republican leaders were faced with two options: Try to go back and rewrite the bill in a way that could secure 50 Republican votes, a seeming impossibility at this point, or do as McConnell promised and team with Democrats to draft a narrower, bipartisan measure to fix the flaws in the Affordable Care Act that both parties acknowledge.
The latter choice seemed to have President Donald Trump’s backing.
After receiving word of the decisions by Moran and Lee, Trump tweeted that Republicans should just repeal the Affordable Care Act and work on a new plan that starts from a “clean slate.”
Trump said that if Republicans start fresh, “Dems will join in!”
The Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, responded to the announcements by urging his Republican colleagues to begin anew and, this time, to undertake a bipartisan effort.
“This second failure of Trumpcare is proof positive that the core of this bill is unworkable,” Schumer said. “Rather than repeating the same failed, partisan process yet again, Republicans should start from scratch and work with Democrats on a bill that lowers premiums, provides long term stability to the markets and improves our health care system.”
McConnell had wanted to move ahead with a vote this week, but he was forced to step back from that plan after Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., underwent surgery last week.
Lee, one of the most conservative members of the Senate, had championed a proposal that would allow insurers to sell low-cost, stripped-down plans — an idea that ended up being added to the latest version of McConnell’s bill. But the language that was added to the bill was not quite what Lee had been advocating, his office said after the bill was released.
Moran faced pressure in his home state about how the bill would affect Kansas, including its rural hospitals. The Kansas Hospital Association said last week that the latest version of the Senate bill “comes up short, particularly for our most vulnerable patients.”