Senate GOP health care bill vote: The whip count

Gov. Rick Scott was in Washington and working on the Senate bill Tuesday before the vote was postponed. Remember, Obamacare expanded Medicaid.

“If Planned Parenthood were to close it would be hard for other providers to absorb that, especially with the specialty care they provide”, she said of the 5,500 patients seen annually. He later said his office is “doing the research” to prepare for possible litigation.

SHAPIRO: If more than two Republican senators vote no, the bill will fail.

Democrats said the Republican bill is fundamentally flawed. That deals another blow to party leaders hoping to push the top-priority measure through the Senate this week.

If facts matter – a big if – a damning new nonpartisan assessment of the Republican Senate’s Obamacare repeal should be more than enough to consign that bill to the dustbin.

Assuming the vote to proceed with debate is successful, Democrats like Blumenthal have vowed to introduce several amendments, which could mean a marathon debate.

Senate Democrats unanimously oppose replacing Obamacare.

Somewhere along the way, the Republican crusade to repeal “Obamacare” also turned into an effort to limit the future growth of Medicaid.

“The CBO report should be the end of the road for Trumpcare”, tweeted Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, announced via Twitter that the CBO report reaffirmed her fears about deep cuts to Medicaid in the Better Care Reconciliation Act and said she would vote against the “motion to proceed”, a procedural vote that allows the Senate to bring up a piece of legislation to be debated and eventually voted on. The bipartisan group that represents state Medicaid directors called the Senate bill changes “a transfer of risk, responsibility, and cost to the states of historic proportions” and criticized the proposed rate of growth of federal spending as “insufficient and unworkable”.

Ryan said every Republican senator campaigned on repealing and replacing Obama’s law. But in their bill, Senate Republicans want to slash Medicaid programs by $722 billion while cutting taxes on the wealthy and corporations by about $540 billion.

However, Levin assesses the Senate bill on its own terms.

But by 2026, CBO says, 15 million fewer Americans will be able to obtain Medicaid coverage than under current law.

Sen. Rand Paul, one of the key Republicans senators in the ongoing health care battle, said on Sunday that his party has “promised too much” with trying to fix the health care system and assuring that the cost of premiums will be lowered. Johnson has been adamant in recent days to hold off on a vote on the bill, which leadership is pushing to happen before the July 4 recess.

Senate Republicans watched support for their Obamacare repeal bill slide into perilous territory after release of a non-partisan report forecasting that the plan would leave 22 million more Americans uninsured by 2026.

Unless those holdouts can be swayed, their numbers are more than enough to torpedo the measure developed in private by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and deliver a bitter defeat for the president.

In good news for the GOP, the budget office said the Senate bill would cut the deficit by $202 billion more over the coming decade than the House version. “The CBO has consistently proven it can not accurately predict how healthcare legislation will impact insurance coverage”, it said in a statement.

McConnell has said he’s willing to make changes to win support, and in the week ahead, plenty of backroom bargaining is expected. We spend two or three times as much as any other industrialized nation, but have a lower life expectancy, more public health problems and a shameful number of people without coverage.