After much anticipation, Senate Republicans have unveiled their new health care bill. If passed, the bill would eradicate much, but not all of President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act—repealing most of its taxes, removing the mandatory insurance requirement and gradually slowing Medicaid expansion, reports The Washington Post.
This draft of the Senate bill comes as a response to the American Health Care Act (AHCA), a bill passed by members of the House of Representatives last month. According to an analysis conducted by the Congressional Budget Office, the House of Representative’s version of the health care bill would lead to 23 million people losing health insurance coverage by 2026, according to The Chicago Tribune.
According to the Tribune, President Donald Trump called on senators to make their version of the health care bill more “generous"—but from the looks of it, the Senate bill isn't much different from the House legislation.
The New York Times reports that the Senate health care bill would allow people to buy health insurance through a new system of federal tax credits. This means that individual states would have the ability to cut services like mental health treatment and maternity care, which are benefits required by Obamacare. The Senate health care bill would also cut federal Planned Parenthood funding.
The Senate bill still has to be passed, though, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) of Kentucky, the chief author of the bill, is planning to make this happen before July 4, according to the Times.
All Democratic senators are already opposed, and if just two of the 52 Republican senators vote no, Vice President Mike Pence will have to break the tie, according to the Post. Some Republican senators who are looking to completely repeal Obamacare aren't impressed with the new bill because it isn't conservative enough, while other GOP members are skeptical because of McConnell's secrecy when drafting the bill. At the moment, it looks like the bill does not have enough votes to pass.
Until the Congressional Budget Office conducts their analysis of the Senate bill, we won't know exactly how many Americans could potentially be impacted by the health care legislation.
