Repeal/Replace Dead McConnell Forced To Switch Strategy

McConnell Forced to Shift Strategy...  

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell bowed to pressure tonight from conservatives — and President Trump — to bring up a straight repeal of most of the Affordable Care Act as the next step now that the Senate health care bill appears to be dead. It will be based on the repeal bill Congress passed in 2015, which then-President Barack Obama vetoed.

His statement: "Regretfully, it is now apparent that the effort to repeal and immediately replace the failure of Obamacare will not be successful. So, in the coming days, the Senate will vote to take up ... a repeal of Obamacare with a two-year delay to provide for a stable transition period to a patient-centered health care system that gives Americans access to quality, affordable health care."

Reality check: It's highly unlikely to succeed, but conservative groups won't consider the GOP's health care promises to be fulfilled until Republicans have at least tried a straight repeal vote. It will put enormous pressure on the moderates, who are sure to have reservations. But as conservatives will remind them, most of them already voted for straight repeal in 2015 — and it will be hard to explain why they wouldn't do it again.

GOP scrambling for a path forward with Trump pushing repeal but some Republicans relieved it failed. Read more here

REPEAL DEAD

WASHINGTON (AP) — The latest GOP effort to repeal and replace "Obamacare" was fatally wounded in the Senate Monday night when two more Republican senators announced their opposition to legislation strongly backed by President Donald Trump.

The announcements from Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Jerry Moran of Kansas left the Republican Party's long-promised efforts to get rid of President Barack Obama's health care legislation reeling. Next steps, if any, were not immediately clear.

Lee and Moran both said they could not support Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's legislation in its current form. They joined GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky, both of whom announced their opposition right after McConnell released the bill last Thursday.

McConnell is now at least two votes short in the closely divided Senate and may have to go back to the drawing board or even begin to negotiate with Democrats, a prospect he's threatened but resisted so far.

McConnell's bill "fails to repeal the Affordable Care Act or address healthcare's rising costs. For the same reasons I could not support the previous version of this bill, I cannot support this one," said Moran.

OBAMACARE REMAINS LAW OF LAND

Following the announcement, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell 

abruptly called for a vote to repeal Obamacare without an immediate replacement as the replacement effort seemed to collapse.

In messages posted to Twitter, Sens. Jerry Moran, R-Ks., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, became the third and fourth GOP senators to say they would not support their party's Obamacare replacement plan as written. They said they would not even back a motion to proceed — a procedural vote that would start debate on the bill.

The GOP, which holds 52 seats in the Senate, had already seen two defections and could not afford a third.