Senate Republicans Don't Have Enough Votes to Pass Revised Healthcare Bill

Update: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell released a statement after two Republican senators announced they wouldn’t vote for the GOP’s healthcare bill.

McConnell said that the Senate would vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act without a replacement. “In the coming days, the Senate will vote to take up the House bill with the first amendment in order being what a majority of the Senate has already supported in 2015 and that was vetoed by then-President Obama: a repeal of Obamacare with a two-year delay to provide for a stable transition period,” said McConnell.

His full statement follows:

Original post continues here:

The GOP’s proposed Affordable Care Act repeal, the Better Care Reconciliation Act, no longer has enough votes to pass through the Senate. Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas announced Monday night that they would not vote for the bill. Lee and Moran joined their colleagues Sen. Rand Paul and Sen. Susan Collins in opposing the bill.

Sen. Lee announced his position on Twitter Monday night:

As did Sen. Moran:

Both released separate statements detailing why they would not support the BCRA. Sen. Lee said he had “conferred with trusted experts” to make his decision. “I have decided I cannot support the current version of the Better Care Reconciliation Act,” Sen. Lee said. “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.”

Sen. Moran knocked his colleagues for their “closed-door” deliberations that produced a bill “which fails to repeal the Affordable Care Act” or “address healthcare’s rising costs” in his statement; he also warned about the possibility of a single-payer system which he described as a more expensive, worse option.

“We must start fresh with an open legislative process to develop innovative solutions that provide greater personal choice, protections for pre-existing conditions, increased access and lower overall costs for Kansans,” Moran said.

A vote on the bill was delayed by Sen. John McCain’s surgery — giving critics more time to persuade some GOP senators who had already expressed concern about the legislation. McCain’s vote would have been crucial, however even he was “noncommittal” in his support of the BCRA, according to The New York Times.

If the bill were to pass, only two GOP senators could defect. Now that four senators have publicly said they would not vote for the bill as it’s currently written, the GOP no longer has enough votes to pass the legislation.