Sen. Lisa Murkowski broke her silence Tuesday about an Obamacare overhaul bill soon after Republicans announced they would halt the effort, saying that the process had been “lousy” and that time had run out.
The Alaska Republican said that while she appreciated the work that her colleagues had put into it, they “have run up against a hard deadline and a lousy process.”
“Time has not been on their side,” she continued. “The U.S. Senate cannot get the text of a bill on a Sunday night, then proceed to a vote just days later, with only one hearing — and especially not on an issue that is intensely personal to all of us.”
Murkowski is a key centrist Republican from Alaska who contributed to the party’s failure in July to pass a bill that would have narrowly repealed Obamacare. The GOP overhaul bill, known as Graham-Cassidy, would have transferred revenue from Obamacare to states through block grants so that they could come up with their own healthcare systems. It also would have repealed the individual and employer mandates. By Monday, Republicans Sens. John McCain of Arizona, Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky said they opposed it. Republicans could not afford to lose more than two votes to guarantee passage.
Murkowski did not say in her statement whether she had planned to back the legislation but said that giving control and flexibility to the states was an idea she could “get behind.”
“But substance matters and the ability to validate data matters,” she said.
Alaska, with its high healthcare costs and low population density, proved a unique challenge that colleagues had tried to understand, she said, but she concluded she did not have enough time to fully assess what the bill’s impact would be on her state.
