Senate Republican leaders are set to unveil a revised healthcare bill today after their previous effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act failed to win enough support from their own party. The latest effort comes amid questions about whether Republicans have the 50 votes needed to clear a procedural hurdle to even begin debating the measure. This is President Trump speaking Wednesday with right-wing televangelist Pat Robertson.
President Donald Trump: “For years, they’ve been talking about repeal, replace, repeal, replace. I think they passed it 61 times, repeal and replace. But that didn’t mean anything, because you had the minority, the Republicans—they didn’t have the majority, so it wasn’t going to get to the president, but if it ever did, Obama wasn’t going to sign it, so it didn’t mean. Now we have a president that’s waiting to sign it. I have pen in hand.”
The latest Senate bill would retain more than $700 billion in cuts to Medicaid by 2026 and is modeled on a previous effort that would cause 22 million people to lose their health insurance over the next decade.