The Senate Health Care Bill Has Stalled, Hopefully Permanently

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | June 27, 2017 |

According to a two reporters, the Senate Health Care bill is dead. For now.

MCCONNELL tells senators: He will delay the health care vote until after the recess to solicit more support from GOP senators
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) June 27, 2017

Behind closed doors, Leader McConnell has told his conference he will delay the health care vote - wants to give them time to get to yes.
— Phil Mattingly (@Phil_Mattingly) June 27, 2017

Note, however, that the reason there was a rush to vote on the bill before the Fourth of July recess is because Mitch McConnell was afraid that constituents would pressure Senators not to vote on the bill during the recess. If the Senate Health Care bill is still on the table, it gives constituents every reason to continue harassing their representatives over the break. Go to town halls. Make those calls. Break down some doors, because while it might be comforting to believe that the Obamacare repeal is dead, we also thought the House bill was dead.

In the meantime, I did see that Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski were working on an Amendment to the health care bill to save funding for Planned Parenthood, which might provide those two enough reason to vote for the bill after the recess.

Personally, unless Medicaid is left alone, I don’t think this gets through the moderates. Unless Medicaid is slashed, I don’t think it gets through the hardliners. Somehow, however, I don’t think this is the last we’ve heard of the AHCA.

Mitch McConnell, however, did warn Trump and the Republicans earlier today that if the AHCA failed, they’d be forced to go to Chuck Schumer and work out a compromise to continue funding Obamacare, lest they take the blame if Obamacare fails. Apparently, moderate Republican Senators had been negotiating with Democrats over how to do just that earlier this year. That’s something many Republicans will not want to do, so this thing is not dead yet.