Several of the six Republican senators who on Wednesday switched their vote on a 2015 bill that would have gutted Obamacare but left it in place for two years while a replacement was crafted said they flip-flopped because Obamacare’s marketplaces are worse now than in 2015, necessitating an immediate replacement.
“Circumstances have changed dramatically in Ohio since then,” said Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio. “We had a competitive market then with multiple insurance companies in every county, and now we have 19 counties with zero and 27 counties with one.”
The senators who switched their votes are Portman, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, John McCain of Arizona, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Dean Heller of Nevada.
Murkowski also said she changed her vote because of recent problems with Obamacare.
“I think the reality in a state like mine is that 2015 you had four insurers and now I am down to one,” she said.
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., made the same sentiment. “In 2015, we might have been able to wait two years, but not now.”
He said he agrees with President Trump, who earlier in the year called for repeal and replace. However, Trump has shifted at times to say he would like to just repeal Obamacare and come up with a replacement in a few years.
The Congressional Budget Office said repealing Obamacare without an immediate replacement could cause 32 million people to lose insurance over the next decade.
However, CBO made that same assessment in 2015 when the bill sailed through the Senate toward an eventual veto from former President Barack Obama.
The repeal vote was taken as part of a larger debate on Obamacare repeal. The Senate has voted down a bill to repeal and immediately replace Obamacare as well as the 2015 repeal bill.
Senate leadership is toying with a “skinny repeal” bill that could eliminate only the individual and employer mandates and medical device tax. Some senators have said that bill would act as a vehicle to get to a conference with the House to iron out differences ad make another run at repealing and replacing Obamacare.
