U.S. Senate votes down ACA repeal plan

The U.S. Senate in the early hours of Friday morning rejected a new, scaled-down Republican plan to repeal parts of the Affordable Care Act, derailing the Republicans’ seven-year campaign to dismantle President Barack Obama’s signature health care law (Source: “Senate Rejects Slimmed-Down Obamacare Repeal as McCain Votes No,” New York Times, July 27, 2017).

Republican senators Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and John McCain of Arizona joined all 48 Democratic senators in opposing the bill.

The “skinny repeal” bill, as it became known at the Capitol this week, would have increased the number of people who are uninsured by 15 million next year compared with current law, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Premiums for people buying insurance on their own would have increased roughly 20 percent, the budget office said.

The new, eight-page Senate bill, called the Health Care Freedom Act, was unveiled just hours before the vote. It would have ended the requirement that most people have health coverage, known as the individual mandate. But it would not have put in place other incentives for people to obtain coverage — a situation that insurers say would leave them with a pool of sicker, costlier customers. It would also have ended the requirement that large employers offer coverage to their workers.

With so many senators in both parties railing against the fast-track procedures that Republican leaders used, a return to health care seemed certain to go through the committees, where bipartisanship and deliberation are more likely.