Republicans in the US Congress were divided over healthcare legislation after a second attempt to pass a bill in the US Senate collapsed on Monday, with US President Donald Trump calling for an outright repeal of the Affordable Care Act and others seeking a change in direction toward bipartisanship.
“Regretfully, it is now apparent that the effort to repeal and immediately replace the failure of Obamacare will not be successful,” US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement.
Two of McConnell’s Senate conservatives just hours earlier said that they would not support the Republican leader’s latest version of legislation to repeal portions of former US president Barack Obama’s 2010 healthcare law and replace them with new, less costly provisions.
With Republican Senators Mike Lee and Jerry Moran joining senators Susan Collins and Rand Paul in opposition — and amid a solid wall of opposition from Democrats — McConnell no longer had enough votes to pass a Republican healthcare bill in the 100-member senate.
It came after seven straight years of Republicans promising voters they would repeal Obamacare if they were to control Congress and the White House.
Republicans say that that Obamacare is an example of government overreach and costs too much money.
Trump said on Twitter that Congress should immediately repeal Obamacare and “start from a clean slate” on a new healthcare plan.
McConnell, apparently backing Trump’s latest approach, said that he would try to bring legislation to repeal Obamacare to the Senate floor in coming days, but with a two-year delay in implementation to assure a smooth transition.
That idea was rejected by Republicans months ago in favor of simultaneously repealing and replacing Obamacare in order to avoid chaos in insurance markets.
Republican Senator John McCain, who was recovering from surgery in his home state of Arizona, urged a much different change of course — bipartisanship.
“The Congress must now return to regular order, hold hearings, receive input from members of both parties” and pass a bill that “finally provides Americans with access to quality and affordable health care,” McCain said in a statement.
Like McCain, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer held out the possibility of bipartisanship.
In a statement, he urged Republicans to “start from scratch and work with Democrats on a bill that lowers premiums, provides long-term stability to the markets and improves our healthcare system.”
Republicans in Congress had been hoping to settle on a healthcare bill before a recess next month so they could begin work in earnest in September on a wide-ranging rewrite of the US tax code.
One health industry lobbyist said that in the run-up to the second collapse of the Senate’s healthcare bill this summer, there was growing anger among senators over proposed cuts to Medicaid and an amendment by US Senator Ted Cruz that would have allowed insurance companies to offer cheaper plans that did not have Obamacare’s guaranteed coverage of services such as maternity care.
A similar version of the Senate bill passed the House in May, but passage in the Senate was always expected to be more difficult, given the deep tensions between moderates and conservatives.
Moderates worry about cuts to the Medicaid health insurance program for poor and disabled people, while conservatives want those cuts as well as a more dramatic dismantling of Obamacare’s framework.
The first version of the Senate bill failed to attract enough support, forcing McConnell’s office to revise it in a bid to make it more palatable. That version was released last week.
US Senator Bernie Sanders celebrated what he termed the “collapse” of the Republican effort.
“This is a great victory for the millions of Americans who stood up and fought back against this dangerous legislation,” Sanders said in a statement.
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