Republican defections sink Senate health bill Paul Singer
Conservatives tweet their opposition
Two Republican senators announced Monday night that they would vote against the revised Senate bill to repeal and replace Obamacare, leaving Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., without enough support to bring the bill to the floor.
Sens. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, both tweeted that they would not support bringing the bill to the floor, a procedural motion that requires 50 votes. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has long been an opponent of the bill because it leaves portions of the Affordable Care Act in place, and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, announced last week that she would vote against it.
With only 52 Republicans in the Senate and unanimous Democratic opposition, any more than two GOP defections would sink the bill.
McConnell had to scrap an earlier planned vote before the July Fourth recess and redrafted the bill, hoping to lure enough support to pass it with no Democratic votes. He had warned that if the new bill could not pass, he may have to simply turn to Democrats to work on repairing the existing law.
Senate leaders unveiled a revised bill last week that would allow the sale of cheap, barebones insurance plans in an attempt to draw enough conservative support to pass the measure to replace Obamacare.
At the same time, the bill tried to appeal to moderates by increasing funding to fight opioid addiction from $2 billion in the original bill to $45 billion in the latest draft.
Those changes have failed to create much enthusiasm among a group of about 10 Republicans who had also been reluctant to support the earlier version.