Speaker will set health care vote when ready

Conservative non-profits Club for Growth and FreedomWorks, also an obstacle in the March attempt, signaled they too would support this version as amended.

Moderate lawmakers in the GOP-controlled Senate, who were already nervous about the GOP’s push to roll back Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion for the poor (a provision that has been embraced by prominent Republican governors and legislatures), will likely find the changes hard to stomach, as Politico notes. Since then, the Freedom Caucus has been moving the bill further to the right.

Among them were Reps.

“The members of our group who were previously opposed to the underlying bill are probably still opposed, based on the amendment, and those who were supportive of the bill, you’d have to ask them”, Dent told reporters.

Rep. Walter Jones, R-North Carolina, said he was voting no because, according to The Hill, “I just can not in good conscience vote for a bill of such importance and not know the cost of it”. Pelosi has also said she would oppose a stopgap measure without a broader agreement on an omnibus spending package that would fund the government through the rest of fiscal year 2017, which ends on September 30.

Conservative and moderate holdouts are still “struggling to get to yes”, said Representative Tom MacArthur of New Jersey, the chief author of an amendment that is reviving hopes for the GOP’s health-care bill.

Other Republicans such as Pennsylvania Rep. Charlie Dent, Florida Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and California Rep. Jeff Denham plan to vote no on the current legislation.

But the new plan isn’t a completely new AHCA; it’s an amendment meant to appease the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus, whose opposition to the original plan ultimately tanked the vote. Timing of a vote remained fluid and will depend on whether the bill picks up enough support. They have the majority, they have the president, they have the Senate, they have the House.

What’s more, several Republicans have begun to question whether a budget reconciliation measure is actually the best way to repeal the ACA, the article added.

But two GOP Senate aides familiar with the negotiations said they did not share the alarm Schumer’s team expressed.

MacArthur said the health care system is “on the brink of collapse” and millions will be hurt if that happens.

“What we’re seeing is that the famed negotiator can’t deliver”, House Democratic Caucus Chairman Joe Crowley of NY said at an event hosted by the liberal think tank Center for American Progress.

“What we see is progress being made, showing that we’re moving and getting on the same page”, he said. In a statement on Wednesday, a spokesperson for the congressman said he was opposed to giving members of Congress and their staff special treatment, according to Vox.

The new proposal suggests that states be allowed to obtain waivers to those rules, and effectively replace them with their own.

Meadows assured lawmakers the issue would be addressed. The problem with that is in moments like this health care fight, when they just can’t seem to find a way to get enough people under that tent to do much of anything.

“Families will be slammed with brutal premium increases”, she said.