Staying Fit
Conceding they don’t have the votes to pass it, the authors of the latest bill designed to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) announced Tuesday that the Senate would not vote on the legislation this week.
The decision not to vote on the Graham-Cassidy bill came after several Senate Republicans said they would oppose it and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said it would leave millions of Americans without affordable health care. Still, Senate leaders left the door open to revisiting health care legislation this session.
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“We don’t have the votes,’’ said Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, coauthor of the measure, after GOP senators gathered for lunch at the Capitol.
"Look, we haven't given up on changing the American health care system; we're not going to do that this week," added Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. "But it still lies ahead of us.”
The announcement comes a day after the CBO said that this latest attempt to repeal the ACA would cause millions of Americans to lose insurance or face severely limited health care coverage.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the other coauthor of the legislation, insisted that he and Cassidy would continue this fight. “We’re coming back to this after taxes,” Graham said, referring to the next item on the Republican majority’s agenda — tax reform. Graham said they will “have a better process and we’re going to take the show on the road.”
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