Mitch McConnell Wants a Revised Senate Healthcare Bill by Friday

The Associated Press
The Associated Press
Sean Moran

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) wants a revised version of the Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA) by Friday to prep for another vote before the August recess.

McConnell hopes to finalize changes to the Senate healthcare bill so that he can send the changes to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to analyze. The CBO reported that 22 million more Americans would not have health insurance over the next ten years under this bill. The BCRA would also reduce the deficit by $321 billion by 2026.

The CBO could send a new CBO score to the revised BCRA by the time the Senate returns from the Fourth of July recess, allowing two weeks for Senate leadership to whip the votes necessary to pass the bill through the upper chamber before Congress leaves Washington, D.C., for the rest of the summer.

The Majority Leader pulled the bill’s vote, which was slated for this week, after realizing there was not enough support for the bill to pass.

Pundits remain unsure what provisions the Senate leadership will try to revise, or whether the bill’s revisions will take a more moderate or conservative approach. Senate leadership has to rally at least five senators to vote for the BCRA. However, there remains an even split between moderate and conservative opposition to the bill. Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Ron Johnson (R-WI) came out against the bill last Thursday, arguing that they could vote for the bill if McConnell included more conservative reforms to it.

Sen. Paul met with President Donald Trump on Tuesday and said that the president remains willing to negotiate on the Senate healthcare bill, although, he wonders whether McConnell wants to negotiate.

Senator Paul released a letter he sent to Majority Leader McConnell with specific reforms he would like to see in the BCRA, which include allowing small businesses and individuals fto orm their own health insurance pools, restructuring the BCRA’s tax credit scheme, and eliminating the BCRA’s continuous insurance coverage mandate.

Paul concluded in his letter, “I hope that this outline aids your understanding of my current position on the Senate health reform bill, and changes that might be made to the language to make good on Republicans’ promise to stop Obamacare and provide true health reform.”

Although some analysts remain skeptical about the bill’s chances of passing before the August recess, other sources say that Republican leadership has a better grasp of what senators want after a meeting with President Trump at the White House on Tuesday.

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