Why Mitch McConnell's Latest Obamacare Repeal Effort Imploded
The Senate effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act stalled out Monday night as two additional Republican senators – Jerry Moran and Mike Lee – announced they would vote against even debating the bill being pushed by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
McConnell conceded the bill was dead late Monday, saying in a statement he would change tactics, moving to open debate on a repeal bill without a replacement plan. (Trump tweeted his support for that course of action Monday night – only to tweet Tuesday morning that the ACA should be allowed to "fail" on its own, perhaps unaware that doing so would mean leaving the legislation in place.)
"I regret that the effort to repeal and immediately replace the failures of Obamacare will not be successful. That doesn't mean we should give up," McConnell said on the Senate floor Tuesday morning. "We will now try a different way to bring the American people relief from Obamacare."
It was a short-lived plan. By early afternoon, three Republican senators – Susan Collins, Shelley Moore Capito and Lisa Murkowski – had announced they would vote against even opening debate on a bill to repeal the ACA without creating a replacement.
Senators had been signaling their discomfort with the idea all morning. "I'll have to look and see what the so-called repeal bill entails, but if it is a bill that simply repeals, I believe that will add to more uncertainty, and the potential for Ohioans to pay even higher premiums, higher deductibles," Sen. Rob Portman told reporters. "So we'll have to see. Obviously, we would look for a CBO analysis of that to see what it involves in terms of not just premiums and deductibles, but also coverage. I'll take a look at it."
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