Senate quickly kills the repeal only bill only and now they struggle with fixing the ACA
Senate Republicans will not take up the straight repeal plan that was put forward today by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) less than 12 hours after the Senate Health Care died last night. Today, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Ala.) says she will not support moving forward with a plan to repeal ObamaCare, she joins Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) who are on record as hard no votes.
Again, McConnell needed 50 yes votes for the straight repeal of the Affordable Care Act and he does not have them. After seven years of saying that were going to repeal and replace Obamacare, but now it won’t happen.
That means the ACA now is likely the law of the land when it comes to health care. Now, it looks like there is the possibility of some bipartisan legislation, but it will take time.
Over on Capitol Hill, as she was entering an elevator, Sen. Murkowski responded to questions from the press.
“No. I said back in January that if we’re going to do a repeal there has to be a replacement. There are enough chaos and uncertainty already,” she told reporters today.
Meanwhile, over at the White House, President Donald Trump took to Twitter to make his case that now Republicans should let Obamacare fail on its own.
As I have always said, let ObamaCare fail and then come together and do a great healthcare plan. Stay tuned!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 18, 2017
Now that the ACA looks like it will stay the law of the land Sen. Collins is working to bring Democrats to the table to fix the health care law.
According to The Hill, Sen. Collins said she is urging Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), the chairman of the Senate’s Heath, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, to “begin to hold hearings to examine ways to fix the many flaws in the ACA so that it will work better for all Americans.”
“We can’t just hope that we will pass a replacement within the next two years. Repealing without a replacement would create great uncertainty for individuals who rely on the [Affordable Care Act] and cause further turmoil in the insurance markets,” she said.
For their part, the Democrats seem willing to work on fixing the issues that plague the ACA.
“We’re all there,” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said of his party’s willingness to work on fixes to the existing law. “I don’t know what it ultimately looks like, but clearly we stabilize the insurance pool, clearly we want to get more young, healthy people in. Clearly, we need to go after the price of prescription drugs. … All kinds of things.”
