Republicans are aiming for a vote on a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare next week, lawmakers told the Washington Examiner Tuesday.
“That’s the plan,” Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., who is a member of the Republican leadership as well as a 13-member healthcare working group.
Republicans are aiming for a vote before the July 4 recess even though as of Tuesday, the bill has not been completely written and many divisions remain within the GOP conference about key components of the legislation.
Republicans said they expect to release the details of the bill as early as Thursday and then hold a vote the following Thursday.
But they plan to attempt a vote anyway, Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, said as he entered the healthcare working group meeting Tuesday afternoon. “That would be my goal,” Cornyn said.
All Republican senators met Tuesday with Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, who came to the Capitol to attend the GOP lunch held in a room near the Senate chamber.
Republicans are at odds over how to wind down Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid, but there are many other that divide the conference, Cornyn said. Still, he is optimistic a bill can pass.
“We are not going to have an unsuccessful vote,” Cornyn said.
Cornyn said the Senate must vote by the end of July in order to provide some certainty to health insurance companies who are now seeking state approval for 2018 insurance rates that have over the past two years spiraled upward significantly.
“That’s the urgency,” Cornyn said. “The alternative of doing nothing is so ugly, we need to act.”
