GOP in frenzied push for health bill

Republican leaders were in a frenzied push to shore up support for a health care bill in the US Senate after a non-partisan congressional office said on Monday it would cause 22 million Americans to lose insurance over the next decade.

Vice-President Mike Pence was expected to travel to Capitol Hill yesterday to join Senate Republicans for a policy lunch before hosting a key conservative senator for dinner.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will continue meeting on-the-fence senators facing questions from their governors and state Medicaid offices about the bill’s cuts to the government insurance programme for the poor and disabled, lawmakers said.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis on Monday prompted Senator Susan Collins, a key moderate vote, to say she could not support moving forward on the bill as it was written.

Opposition unchanged

At least four conservative Republicans — Senators Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Ron Johnson and Mike Lee — said their opposition remained unchanged after the CBO analysis.

Further, Collins, Paul and Johnson, along with Senator Dean Heller, have all said they will oppose a procedural motion that would allow McConnell to move forward and bring the bill up for a vote.

Heller, a moderate Republican up for re-election next year in Nevada, is already facing political fallout after a group started by former campaign aides to President Donald Trump and Pence promised to run ads against him. The overlapping concerns and competing interests of the lawmakers highlights the balancing act facing McConnell.

Trump — and most Republicans in Congress — were elected on campaign pledges to repeal and replace Obamacare, Democratic President Barack Obama’s signature 2010 law that extended insurance coverage to some 20 million Americans.