Two more Republican senators oppose revised health-care bill

The latest GOP effort to repeal and replace “Obamacare” was fatally wounded in the Senate
Monday night when two more Republican senators announced their opposition to
legislation strongly backed by President Donald Trump.

The announcements from Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Jerry Moran of Kansas left
the Republican Party’s long-promised efforts to get rid of President Barack
Obama’s health-care legislation reeling. Next steps, if any, were not
immediately clear.

Lee and Moran both said they could not support Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell’s legislation in its current form. They joined GOP Sens. Susan Collins
of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky, both of whom announced their opposition
right after McConnell released the bill last Thursday.

McConnell is now at least two votes short in the closely divided Senate and
may have to go back to the drawing board or even begin to negotiate with
Democrats, a prospect he’s threatened but resisted so far.

McConnell’s bill “fails to repeal the Affordable Care Act or address
health-care’s rising costs. For the same reasons I could not support the previous
version of this bill, I cannot support this one,” said Moran.

It was the second straight failure for McConnell, who had to cancel a vote on
an earlier version of the bill last month when defeat became inevitable.

Trump had kept his distance from the Senate process, but Monday night’s
development was a major blow for him, too, as the president failed to rally
support for what has been the GOP’s trademark issue for seven years — ever since
Obama and the Democrats passed the Affordable Care Act in the first place.

The Senate bill eliminated mandates and taxes under Obamacare, and unraveled a Medicaid expansion. But for
conservatives like Lee and Paul it didn’t go far enough in delivering on
Republican Party promises to undo Obama’s law, while moderates like Collins
viewed the bill as too extreme in yanking insurance coverage from millions.

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