U.S. Senator expresses doubt on health reform passage

Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) says he doesn't think Congress is going to reach a deal to repeal and replace ObamaCare (Source: “GOP senator: Healthcare deal unlikely this year,” The Hill, June 2, 2017).

"It's unlikely that we will get a healthcare deal," Burr said in an interview with a North Carolina news station Thursday.  "I don't see a comprehensive healthcare plan this year."

The Senate has been working on a healthcare bill since the House passed its own last month, and Senate Republican Whip John Cornyn (Texas) said a bill would pass through the chamber by "the end of July at the latest."

But there are deep divisions on issues such as how to handle the Medicaid expansion and the ACA's insurer regulations, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has lowered expectations, saying he did not know how the Senate would get to 51 votes on healthcare and suggested that moving tax reform legislation could be simpler.

The Senate’s work on health reform comes in the wake of the the long-awaited Congressional Budget Office analysis of the American Health Care Act, which passed the U.S. House last month. The CBO score concluded last week that while the Republican plan to replace the ACA would reduce deficits by $119 billion, it also would increase the number of Americans without health insurance by 23 million over the next decade (Source: “1 million Ohioans to lose health coverage under Obamacare replacement,” Columbus Dispatch, May 25, 2017).

The analysis from the nonpartisan CBO, completed with the Joint Committee on Taxation, also found that in states that receive a waiver from market regulations, the price for those who become ill or who have pre-existing conditions could skyrocket to the point that they would ultimately be priced out of the market.