Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican Sen.
Susan Collins' decision to oppose the GOP push to repeal President Barack
Obama's health care overhaul leaves the effort all but dead, with even party
leaders conceding that their prospects are dismal.
"It's going to be a heavy
lift," South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the No. 3 GOP Senate leader, said
Monday, after Collins joined a small but pivotal cluster of Republicans saying
they're against the measure. He called the prospects "bleak."
"We don't have the support for
it," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.
The collapse marks a replay of the
embarrassing loss President Donald Trump and party leaders suffered in July,
when the Senate rejected three attempts to pass legislation erasing Obama's
2010 statute. The GOP has made promises to scrap the law a high-profile vow for
years, and its failure to deliver despite controlling the White House and
Congress has infuriated conservatives whose votes Republican candidates need.
To resuscitate their push,
Republicans would need to change opposing senators' minds, which they've tried
unsuccessfully to do for months. Collins told reporters that she made her
decision despite a phone call from Trump, who's been futilely trying to press
unhappy GOP senators to back the measure.
Barring a reversal, Senate Majority
Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., must decide whether to hold a roll call at all.
Three GOP "no" votes would
doom the bill. GOP Sens. John McCain of Arizona, Rand Paul of Kentucky and
Texas' Ted Cruz have said they oppose the measure, though Cruz aides said he
was seeking changes that would let him vote yes.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska,
remains undecided. Murkowski, who voted against the failed GOP bills in July,
has said she's analyzing the measure's impact on her state, where medical costs
are high.
This was the last week Republicans
had any chance of prevailing with their narrow 52-48 Senate margin. Next
Sunday, protections expire against a Democratic filibuster, bill-killing delays
that Republicans lack the votes to overcome.
Republicans had pinned their last
hopes on a measure by GOP Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and South Carolina's
Lindsey Graham. It would end Obama's Medicaid expansion and subsidies for
consumers and ship the money — $1.2 trillion through 2026 — to states to use on
health services with few constraints.
Collins announced her decision
shortly after the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said
"millions" of
Americans would lose coverage under the bill and
projected it would impose $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts through 2026.
The Maine moderate said in a
statement that the legislation would make "devastating" cuts in the
Medicaid program for poor and disabled people, drive up premiums for millions
and weaken protections Obama's law gives people with pre-existing medical
conditions. She said the legislation is "deeply flawed," despite
eleventh-hour changes its sponsors have made in search of support.
Desperate to win over reluctant
senators, GOP leaders revised the measure several times, adding money late
Sunday for Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Kentucky and Texas in a clear pitch for
Republican holdouts. They also gave states the ability — without federal
permission — to permit insurers to charge people with serious illnesses higher
premiums and to sell low-premium policies with big coverage gaps and high
deductibles.
Loud protesters forced the Senate Finance
Committee to briefly delay the chamber's first and only hearing on the charged
issue. Police lugged some demonstrators out of the hearing room and trundled
out others in wheelchairs as scores chanted, "No cuts to Medicaid, save
our liberty."
On Monday, Trump took on McCain,
who'd returned to the Senate after a brain cancer diagnosis in July to cast the
key vote that wrecked this summer's effort. Trump called that "a
tremendous slap in the face of the Republican Party" in a call to the "Rick
& Bubba Show," an Alabama-based talk radio program.
Cassidy and Graham defended their
bill before the Finance committee.
"I don't need a lecture from
anybody about health care," Graham told the panel's Democrats. Referring
to Obama's overhaul, he added, "What you have created isn't working."
Also testifying was Sen. Mazie
Hirono, D-Hawaii, who learned earlier this year that she has kidney cancer.
She said colleagues and others have
helped her battle the disease with compassion, saying, "Sadly, this is not
in this bill."
Associated Press Washington bureau
chief Julie Pace, and writers Andrew Taylor, Richard Lardner, Laurie Kellman,
Ken Thomas and Erica Werner contributed to this report.
https://insurancenewsnet.com/oarticle/gop-concedes-health-bills-fate-bleak-senators-defect
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