GOP Healthcare law vote expected next week

[Chris0nllyn]

In a political exercise that is coming down to the wire, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced Tuesday that a "discussion draft" of the bill that would repeal and replace Obamacare -- which has so far been kept closely under wraps -- will be released this Thursday.

The aim is to send final legislation to the Congressional Budget Office this week so that the CBO can review the bill and issue a report early next week before a vote that would likely happen next Thursday, June 29

McConnell said there would be ample time to read the bill, but didn't commit to a specific number of days. "Oh they'll have plenty of time," he said. "This will be about as transparent as it can be."

http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/20/politics/senate-republican-health-care-bill-vote/index.html

 

[Chris0nllyn]

Rand Paul's thoughts:

The House bill has 90 percent of the subsidies of Obamacare….If this gets any more subsidies in it, it may well be equal to what we have in Obamacare. So it really wouldn't be repeal. […]

I think they've forgotten all the rallies where they said they were going to repeal it. I mean, we had thousands of people standing up and cheering us on saying they were going to repeal it. And now they've gotten kind of weak-kneed and I think they want to keep it. But they're getting hit from both sides. Conservatives who are in the know are going to know that this isn't repeal. And no Democrat likes it because they think it's going to go too far. So I think you're going to wind up with what you had in the House bill—about 20 percent of the public's going to think it's a good idea.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DCyQa8XXYAAFUAU.jpg
https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/877234822778941441

Mike Lee's thoughts:

Even though I've been a member of this working group among Senate Republicans assigned to help narrow some of the focus of this, I haven't seen the bill....And it has become increasingly apparent in the last few days that even though we thought we were going to be in charge of writing a bill within this working group, it's not being written by us, it's apparently being written by a small handful of staffers for members of the Republican leadership in the Senate....We should have been able to see it weeks ago if we were going to voting on it next week.

https://www.facebook.com/senatormikelee/videos/1534056576626030

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who is also a member of the working group with Lee, defended the process on Tuesday, arguing that complaints from Democrats who feel left out of the process are "fairly amusing."

"There has been no political issue in modern times more debated than ObamaCare," he told reporters.

But Cruz also signaled dissatisfaction with the emerging Senate legislation, saying it's "got a long way to go."

"In particular, we need [to do] a substantially better job of driving down the cost of premiums. That remains my number one priority," he said.

http://thehill.com/policy/healthcar...ive-republicans-rip-senate-healthcare-process

“I would like a more open process, that's for sure,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), another key vote on the bill.

http://thehill.com/policy/healthcar...-criticizing-healthcare-process-in-the-senate

Senator John McCain says he hasn't seen the Senate's version of the American Health Care Act — but wouldn't be surprised if the Russians have.

"I’m sure the Russians have been able to hack in and gotten most of it," McCain said,according to Bloomberg. He also noted that he hasn't met "any American" who has seen the bill.

http://time.com/4825959/john-mccain-healthcare-bill-mitch-mcconnell/

 

[Gilligan]

I have low expectations....

 

[awpitt]

Just hope this secret Senate version is better than what came out of the House. The House version just takes a bad thing (Obamacare) and makes it worse.