WASHINGTON (AP) – Senate GOP leaders plan to vote as soon as this month on major health care legislation even though they remain uncertain, for now, whether their still-unwritten bill will pass, lawmakers said Monday.
The House narrowly passed its own version of legislation to repeal and replace former President Barack Obama’s health care law last month. Senate Republicans have rejected the House bill but have struggled to come to agreement on a version of their own.
But now, with pressing budget deadlines looming and President Donald Trump eager to focus on tax legislation, Senate GOP leaders have decided it’s time to vote and move on.
“We’ve been talking about this for seven years, so now is the time to start coming up with some tangible alternatives and building consensus,” GOP Sen. John Cornyn of Texas said Monday.
Cornyn and others said Senate Republicans would be presented with legislative options at a meeting Tuesday with the goal of making decisions on what is in and what’s out of their bill. A sticking point remains how to unwind the Medicaid expansion in Obama’s law, since some states expanded Medicaid and some did not, and there are Republican senators representing states that did both.