Juliegrace Brufke on July 17, 2017
The revised version of the Senate Obamacare repeal bill is dead in its current form as two more GOP senators said they plan to vote against the motion to proceed on the Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA) Monday.
Sens. Jerry Moran of Kansas and Mike Lee of Utah joined Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Susan Collins of Maine in coming out against the measure.
Lee, like Paul, said the legislation doesn’t go far enough to repeal the Affordable Care Act and called for major revisions to update the bill. While an amendment put forward by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Lee was enough to get Cruz on board, Lee said the current draft isn’t conservative enough.
“After conferring with trusted experts regarding the latest version of the Consumer Freedom Amendment, I have decided I cannot support the current version of the Better Care Reconciliation Act,” Lee said in a statement. “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.”
Moran cited the lack of transparency in the process, calling for the upper chamber to start fresh on crafting the measure.
“This closed-door process has yielded the BCRA, which fails to repeal the Affordable Care Act or address health care’s rising costs. For the same reasons I could not support the previous version of this bill, I cannot support this one,” he said. “We should not put our stamp of approval on bad policy.”
Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said he is now on the fence on whether he would support moving forward on the motion to proceed.
Johnson told reporters Monday he is no longer encouraging members to vote for the measure, railing against leadership for their recent comments on Medicaid.
According to Johnson, McConnell told moderate members they shouldn’t be concerned with cuts to Medicaid expansion because it’s “too far in the future,” which he feels was a “real breach of trust.”
Leadership could only lose two Republican votes to pass the measure, despite only needing a simple majority under the rules of reconciliation.
Three million more Americans voted for Clinton than Trump.
Three million more Americans voted to keep Obamacare than dump it.
Wah, wah, wah, when are you going to shut up about 3 million more Americans voted for Killary? Are you really that idiotic? The 3 million were illegal immigrants, deceased individuals & the votes she stole from Bernie Sanders! Shut the hell up you fool & get over it. Trump won because Americans didn’t want a Killary in any other position of power! Trump won fairly & squarely so give it up with the whining! You & jeansandjackets must be related, you’re both idiots!
If Susan Collins of Maine is against the bill, it must be good. Collins is one of the reasons we have ObamaCare without her help getting it to the senate floor we would still have the health care that worked. Health Care would work again if the government would just get the hell out.
That’s because we the people have spoken. We have called our Congressman. Nothing less than a full repeal will do. We don’t want it replaced with another big gubment program. #RemembertheVA
Republican leadership is an oxymoron.
More comments from the losing side of the aisle. How long have you been on Medicade ….. STROKE!
McConnell and Ryan are the two worthless leaders representing the Congress. McConnell is only interested in what lines his pockets with the Pharmaceutical Companies and the Insurance Industry. The old saying
“We the people” is by McConnell terms is “We the Congress you the people” taking care of themselves with the health care bill. There was nothing wrong with the previous health care in the US until Obama and the Democrats destroyed it. Leave it to the Feds. Secondly they could go back to the original healthcare and add in the removing the state borders so one could find less expensive insurance premiums by shopping around. Then in the State of Florida we have an Insurance Company called Citizens where a homeowner can’t find homeowners insurance because of the hurricanes in state. This is pooled insurance program with lesser insurance premiums and cannot be turned down. I am asking the impossible of the Congress to think out of the box and do something like this for those uninsured people with a pool in the Federal government budget. We will be paying for it one way or another, because they are noting more than a group of good old boys and girls who are mostly lawyers and we know the ambulance chasers quite well.