With debate over health care now proceeding, it’s time to vote on actual health care bills. A few moments ago the Senate voted against BCRA, their primary repeal-and-replace bill. This is the one they’ve been working busily on for the past couple of months. It wasn’t close: the bill went down 43-57 or thereabouts.
Next up, I suppose, is a bunch of amendments and then a revote? I’m not sure. Or maybe they’ll go straight to voting on the 2015 repeal-only bill.
Eventually they’ll get to the placeholder “skinny repeal” bill and just punt the whole thing to a conference committee. They’ll probably get 50 votes for that. Senators are always in favor of punting.
UPDATE: This was just a “procedural” vote. Everything in the Senate is a procedural vote. This means that BCRA might get modified and then get another vote. But chances of passage are dim. It lost by a mighty big margin tonight.
