Health care debate: What’s Next?
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The Senate’s marathon debate to dismantle Obamacare enters Day Two on Wednesday, as Republican senators continue painstaking deliberations to reach an ultimate agreement on health care reform.
The goal for McConnell at the moment is to find a way to get 50 Republicans to back a final bill — whatever it looks like.
As with the full repeal without immediate replacement vote, the GOP leadership is getting a sense of where their members are on various proposals, as well as testing out revised language with the parliamentarian on things like the Planned Parenthood defunding provision.
If McConnell can get 50 votes, he can bring the repeal and replace bill to conference with the House. That was why the emergence of the “skinny repeal” option Tuesday is noteworthy — a scaled back version of repeal that would knock out the Obamacare mandates and some of the taxes. In no way would Republicans want something like to that to become law in isolation. But it may become an option just to get something across the finish line, for now. Then they would attempt to hammer out a more comprehensive repeal and replace proposal in the conference with the House.
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