The 60 votes will come into play when they try to cut off debate to end a filibuster. Reconciliation rules do not apply to either of the bills under consideration https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/25/16025636/senate-health-bill-bcra-60-votes
Senate Republican leaders have reportedly concluded that their particular version of the health care bill, the Better Care Reconciliation Act, will need 60 votes to pass under Senate rules — essentially ensuring that that particular version of the bill cannot pass this week.
But importantly, it still remains possible that Republicans can pass something — the repeal-and-delay bill (the Obamacare Repeal Reconciliation Act), the House bill (the American Health Care Act), or some kind of stripped-down “skinny” repeal — with a bare majority under the reconciliation process.
The problem, as Leigh Ann Caldwell of NBC News reported Tuesday morning, is that two major recent changes to Senate leaders’ bill — an amendment by Sen. Ted Cruz on insurance market regulation, and an amendment by Sen. Rob Portman on Medicaid — have not yet been scored by the Congressional Budget Office.
The lack of a CBO score means that we don’t know the budgetary implications for the newest version of the BCRA, and therefore, it doesn’t pass muster under the Senate’s budget reconciliation rules that allow certain measures to pass with just a majority vote.
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