The GOP's Revised Healthcare Bill Is Already on Life Support After Less Than 24 Hours
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The Senate Republicans’ revised healthcare bill—designed to win over both moderate and right-wing holdouts after the first version was torpedoed before the July 4 recess—is already on life support, with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell contending with a razor-thin margin to get the legislation passed.
Before any votes can even be cast, McConnell needs 50 of 52 Republican senators to back a motion to proceed with a debate the new version of the bill, which is largely unchanged from its earlier version. Less than 24 hours after dropping the revised bill, Republican senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and Susan Collins of Maine have said they remain hard “nos,” so McConnell needs every single other senator to stay on board.
Now all eyes are on the moderate holdouts who halted the bill the first time around, such as Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio and Nevada Sen. Dean Heller. For now, Portman remains undecided, as does Heller. If the Republicans lose either of them, the measure is effectively sunk—which would be a crushing blow to the party’s already stalled legislative agenda.
Two of the most unpopular provisions of the Better Care Reconciliation Act remain in the revised version: deep cuts to Medicaid (the Congressional Budget Office estimated the measure would reduce funding by one-fourth by the end of the decade) and a one-year prohibition on funding Planned Parenthood health services.
WHAT ELSE?
- I’m just going to leave this here. Please, make it stop.
- BEYONCÉ HAD THE BABIES A MONTH AGO AND HERE THEY ARE.
Correction: An earlier version of this post incorrectly characterized Sen. John McCain as a “no” vote on the healthcare bill. According to The Washington Post, the Arizona senator is still in the “has concerns” camp.