The Senate GOP’s Obamacare Repeal Bill Is Dead

For now.

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Update: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell released the following statement indicating that he intends to call a straight repeal bill for a vote.

The Republican push to repeal Obamacare is dead. Again.

Sens. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) announced Monday night that they would not support the “Better Care Reconciliation Act” in its current form, forcing the Republican leadership to once more start over in its push to undo the Affordable Care Act. With Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) already publicly opposed, these new defections left Republicans two votes short of the total they’d need to advance the legislation. The vote, originally scheduled for this week, had already been delayed due to the absence of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who is recovering from a surgery to remove a blood clot.

The arch-conservative Lee, somewhat predictably, argued that the bill wasn’t conservative enough. But Moran, one of the only Senate Republicans to hold a town hall while the proposal was being discussed, used his statement to ask his party’s leadership to “start fresh with an open legislative process.”

Monday’s news is still only a temporary setback for a repeal effort that has died and come back to life repeatedly since the spring. Trumpcare, like disco and cockroaches, cannot be destroyed by conventional means, and the tens of millions of Americans who stand to lose their insurance under the House and Senate bills won’t be officially out of the woods unless Democrats take back the House next November.

Update: Shortly after the news of Moran and Lee’s desertion, President Donald Trump tweeted that Congress should drop its plan to repeal and replace Obamacare in a single measure and instead repeal the law first and replace it later.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate