Senate Republicans will try to reach a deal to drum up enough support for their healthcare legislation by the end of the week, with plans for a vote when they return from the week-long July 4 recess.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., abruptly told Republican senators during a closed-door luncheon Tuesday that there wasn’t enough support for the Better Care Reconciliation Act and that he was delaying a planned vote for this week on the bill.
Republican senators said after the meeting that the plan now is to use the rest of this week to reach a deal for at least 50 senators to support the bill, the minimum threshold needed for it to pass through reconciliation, with Vice President Mike Pence able to break 50-50 tie. Republican senators have been invited to the White House Tuesday afternoon to discuss the legislation.
Ideally, the Congressional Budget Office would use next week to score any changes to the bill, said Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., as he left the meeting.
The Senate would then take up the bill when it returns July 10.
Following the Republican lunch, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said he was optimistic that Republicans would be able to reach a deal on a healthcare bill and that he wanted to see provisions changed in the bill that would result in lower premiums.
“We continue to have productive discussions, and I believe we can get to yes and we will get to yes,” Cruz said.
Cruz, a key conservative, has said that he wants to let insurers opt out of selling plans that abide by Obamacare’s insurance mandates as long as they keep one plan that does. On Tuesday, he did not specify which policies he would like to see changed in the Senate’s healthcare bill.
“We need substantial reforms to lower premiums,” Cruz said. “My central focus from day one has been the need to lower premiums to make health insurance more affordable for families who are struggling. There is not enough in the current draft to do that. There are a number of common-sense reforms that the working group has discussed for months that I believe will ultimately be reflected in the final draft. And when they are, I think we can have a bill that can be passed. We are not there yet, but I believe we can get there.”
Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, a conservative Republican who had lamented the process by which the healthcare bill was quickly moved through the Senate, said he was glad the vote had been delayed and hoped the next version could reduce prices for working families.
“The first draft of the bill included hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts for the affluent, bailouts for insurance companies and subsidies for lower-income Americans,” he said. “But it ignored the middle-class families who have borne the brunt of Obamacare, and who have been left behind by both parties in Washington for too long. That’s why I opposed it.”
Centrists are concerned about Medicaid funding as well as reducing coverage for addiction services to fight the opioid crisis. The current draft legislation calls for cutting more than $700 billion from Medicaid compared fro current law and would give $2 billion to the opioid epidemic.
Although members of the Republican leadership were optimistic Tuesday morning that they would be able to hold a procedural vote Wednesday, individual members said they didn’t necessarily see a need to rush a vote.
“A lot of it depends on what others decide to do,” said Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., before heading into the GOP lunch. “For me the timeline is this: I need to know what changes need to be made to the bill in order for me to support it, and then I have to figure out how long it’s going to take for us to make them. If they can be made quickly and without opposition, that’s one thing. If they require extended debate and back and forth, that’s something else.”
Rubio has said that he is focused on Florida, which has a Medicaid structure that is similar to the proposals in the GOP healthcare draft. He added, however, that he would have questions about how much federal spending the state would receive, though he believed it would end up being more than it receives currently. His concern, he said, was primarily on stabilizing the individual market. “Ultimately I’d rather do it right than do it fast,” he said. “We are going to have to live with these consequences. Otherwise we’ll have to come back and do it again. That was the experience of Obamacare.”
It turns out McConnell didn’t just have trouble from his right and centrist flanks. Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., a conservative who has supported leadership, tweeted on Tuesday that he also didn’t support the Senate bill because it “missed the mark for Kansans.”
