Senate Republicans plan to unveil their second attempt at repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act on Thursday, hoping to find a legislative sweet spot to attract 50 votes for the bill and keep their long-standing promise to dismantle former President Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement.
But passing this bill is just the beginning of fixing problems with the nation’s health care industry, said Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina.
“What most people fail to mention when they oppose the bill is that this is not a once-and-done process. This is the first step of a series of legislative actions we’ll have to take and administrative actions to fix it,” said Tillis, a first-term Republican. “We need to put in a foundation we can build on.”
Getting enough support to pass a first attempt at repeal and replace has proven difficult, however.
The House narrowly passed a bill — the American Health Care Act — after its initial attempt stalled. The Senate planned a vote on its own proposal before its Fourth of July break, but Republican leaders were forced to abandon that plan due to a lack of support among both conservative and moderate members of the caucus.
The Congressional Budget Office found that 22 million more Americans would be without health insurance by 2026 if the Senate bill became law.
Unlike several Republican colleagues, neither Burr nor Tillis have publicly expressed reservations about the bill.
Even a revised bill, which is likely to include concessions to both the left and right of the party, faces an uncertain fate in the Senate.
In March, before the House passed its version of the bill, President Donald Trump suggested reform would be a three-step process, including regulatory fixes and a second piece of legislation to allow health insurance to be sold across state lines.