Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell intends to release an updated version of the Republican healthcare bill on Thursday and is delaying the body’s annual August recess by two weeks in an effort to generate momentum for the beleaguered legislation.
“In order to provide more time to complete action on important legislative items and process nominees that have been stalled by a lack of cooperation from our friends across the aisle, the Senate will delay the start of the August recess until the third week of August,” McConnell said in a statement.
Senators were supposed to head home at the end of July. The GOP will also release an updated version of their Better Care Reconciliation Act, which so far has drawn opposition from both moderate Republicans who say it goes too far in reducing Medicaid funding and conservatives who argued the bill doesn’t go far enough to fully repeal regulations and subsidies in the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.
Moreover, McConnell had wanted to have a vote on the bill before the July 4th recess, but he didn’t have the votes he needed to pass it after at least five GOP lawmakers came out against the current version. There are currently 52 Republicans in the Senate and 50 need to support it to pass.
A revised Congressional Budget Office score, showing the costs and impact on coverage of the new version of the bill, is expected on Monday or Tuesday of next week. The CBO score of the first version found that the BCRA would leave 22 million more people uninsured by 2026.
A vote on a motion to proceed on the revised bill is expected by the end of next week. If that preliminary procedural measure passes, there will be debate on the bill that could go on for days.
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