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The Senate voted narrowly on Tuesday to begin debate on a bill to repeal major provisions of the Affordable Care Act, but hours later, Republican leaders suffered a setback when their most comprehensive plan to replace President Barack Obama’s health law fell far short of the votes it needed. The Tuesday night tally needed to reach 60 votes to overcome a parliamentary objection. Instead, it fell 43-57. The fact that the comprehensive replacement plan came up well short of even 50 votes was an ominous sign for Republican leaders still grappling with a formula to pass final health care legislation...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has locked in this week's attempt to repeal Obamacare, by scheduling a vote on Tuesday to start debate on the legislation. "The only way we'll have an opportunity to consider ideas is if senators have an opportunity to offer and debate them and that means kicking off debate, it means voting to proceed," McConnell, R-Ky., said Monday on the Senate floor. "And that will occur tomorrow." The announcement comes as Republicans struggle to garner the 50 GOP votes needed to let them move onto the bill, and as the party debates how to replace Obamacare...

After a repeated series of false starts, Senate Republicans are meeting again Wednesday night in an attempt to bring their healthcare bill back from the dead. The renewed attempt comes amid a flurry of mixed signals form leadership and whiplash-inducing shifts from President Donald Trump.

Hoping to avoid a humiliating political defeat, President Trump on Wednesday demanded that Republican senators resume their efforts to approve a plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, insisting that lawmakers are “very close.” A day after the GOP strategy to roll back the ACA appeared dead, Trump invited Republican senators to lunch at the White House and challenged them to work out an agreement even if it means remaining in Washington through their summer recess next month. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had previously announced that the recess would be delayed by two weeks.

The Senate will defer consideration of the GOP healthcare plan that would partially repeal and replace Obamacare until Sen. John McCain returns to work following a procedure to remove a blood clot from above his left eye, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement late Saturday. After wishing him a "speedy recovery," McConnell, R-Ky., added: "While John is recovering, the Senate will continue our work on legislative items and nominations, and will defer consideration of the Better Care Act." About two hours earlier McCain's office revealed that he would be spending a week in his home state of...

It is "pretty clear there are not 50 Republicans at the moment for a replacement," McConnell said at a news conference following an all-GOP Senate lunch. But he still insisted that there would be a repeal-only vote "in the very near future." While the Kentucky Republican did not specify when that vote would be, Senate GOP whip John Cornyn told reporters afterward that the it would likely happen some time this week.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on Monday night the Senate will try to separate the ObamaCare repeal and replacement efforts, closing the door on the current GOP healthcare legislation. "In the coming days, the Senate will vote to take up the House bill with the first amendment in order being what a majority of the Senate has already supported in 2015 and that was vetoed by then-President Obama: a repeal of Obamacare with a two-year delay to provide for a stable transition period," McConnell said in a statement. The move means Senate Republicans will try to repeal ObamaCare...

GOP Sens. Jerry Moran (Kansas) and Mike Lee (Utah) announced on Monday night they will not support taking up a bill repealing and replacing ObamaCare, effectively blocking the legislation. "This closed-door process has yielded the [bill], which fails to repeal the Affordable Care Act or address healthcare’s rising costs. For the same reasons I could not support the previous version of this bill, I cannot support this one," Moran said in a statement. Lee added on Twitter that "my colleague @JerryMoran and I will not support the MTP to this version of BCRA."

I miss the old days, when Republicans stood for repealing Obamacare. Republicans across the country and every member of my caucus campaigned on repeal – often declaring they would tear out Obamacare “root and branch!” What happened? Now too many Republicans are falling all over themselves to stuff hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ dollars into a bill that doesn’t repeal Obamacare and feeds Big Insurance a huge bailout. Obamacare regulations? Still here. Taxes? Many still in place, totaling hundreds of billions of dollars. Insurance company bailouts? Those, too. Remember when Republicans complained about Obamacare’s risk corridors? Remember when we called...

<p>Senate Republican leaders dropped provisions that would repeal two taxes on high earners in a revised draft of their health-care bill sent to the Congressional Budget Office, according to GOP senators.</p> <p>Republican leaders are now planning to retain Obamacare’s 3.8 percent tax on net investment income for people who earn more than $200,000 and couples with incomes over $250,000, as well as a 0.9 percent Medicare surtax on the same incomes.</p>

A senior U.S. Republican senator predicted on Sunday that the Republican bill to roll back Obamacare would likely fail, adding to growing signs that the bill is in trouble. "My view is that it's probably going to be dead," Senator John McCain, a senior U.S. Republican, said on the CBS program, "Face the Nation." The Senate bill, which faces unified Democratic opposition, has been further imperiled during a week-long recess where several Republican senators have had to return to their states and face constituents strongly opposed to the bill. Senators return to Washington on Monday.

So much for Donald Trump’s input, eh? Yesterday, the president tweeted out his strategy for solving the impasse in the Senate over the ObamaCare repeal effort — to split the repeal and replace functions and pass each separately. Senators Ben Sasse and Rand Paul immediately endorsed the idea, although Sasse did want to give the comprehensive strategy a few more days first.

Licensed prostitutes in Nevada, working in legal brothels, are organizing against legislation they say will devastate them, other prostitutes across the nation and their families. With Obamacare (Affordable Care Act), now under threat of being repealed and replaced, "thousands of prostitutes nationwide were, for the first time, able to obtain affordable health care insurance for themselves and their families," said a press release issued Thursday.

Thursday on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said he and his GOP colleagues in the Senate were still at “impasse” on the legislation being considered to repeal and replace Obamacare. “I still sense we’re at impasse,” Paul said. “And I said yesterday at lunch with our Republican caucus and everybody kind of laughed because there is still quite a bit of disagreement. There’s basically two factions. There’s conservatives like myself who don’t want new federal programs, we want to repeal Obamacare. And then there’s some of the moderates who kind of want to keep some...

<p>Sources tell the Associated Press that Senate Republican leaders have abruptly delayed the vote on their health care bill until after the July 4th recess.</p> <p>That's the word Tuesday as the GOP faced five defections from its ranks just hours after the Congressional Budget Office said the bill would force 22 million off insurance rolls.</p>

WASHINGTON — With his bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act in deep trouble, Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, raised an alternate possibility on Tuesday evening: Either Republicans come together in the days ahead, or he may have to work with Democrats to shore up the deteriorating health law. That raised a tantalizing prospect: bipartisanship. The idea is not that far-fetched. For years, Republicans and Democrats have explored avenues for changing or improving President Barack Obama’s health care law, from modest tweaks like raising the size threshold at which businesses must offer their employees health insurance to larger revisions...

The CBO says the Senate health reform bill would leave 22 million more people uninsured in 2026 compared to current law. That’s a slight improvement over the House bill which the CBO said would leave 23 million uninsured the same year. The CBO does note that the majority of this change next year would be the result of eliminating the penalty on not having insurance. From the CBO report: CBO and JCT estimate that, in 2018, 15 million more people would be uninsured under this legislation than under current law—primarily because the penalty for not having insurance would be...

Some 22 million Americans could lose their health insurance over the next decade under a Senate bill to replace Obamacare, a congressional report says. However, the bill would reduce the budget deficit by a total of $321bn (£252bn) in 2017-2026, the non-partisan Congressional Budgetary Office said. Similar legislation passed by the House of Representatives was also said to be likely to leave millions uninsured. A number of Republicans have expressed reservations about the Senate plan. The draft legislation, unveiled last week, is unlikely to be approved by Democrats, who see it as cruel and unfair. President Donald Trump's Republican party...

Senate Republicans and the White House are facing down an increasingly daunting challenge to secure the votes necessary to pass legislation before the July 4 congressional recess that would make dramatic changes to President Obama’s signature health care law. At least five Republicans have already come out against their party’s bill — which can only afford to lose two votes — and over the weekend more began expressing serious reservations and skepticism about the proposal, saying they would like more time to debate and tweak the plan. A key moment will arrive early this week when the Congressional Budget Office...

Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” while discussing the Republican health care bill, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said he would vote for a partial repeal of Obamacare, but the current bill was “not anywhere close to repeal.” Paul said, “I’ve been telling leadership for months now that I will vote for a repeal and it doesn’t have to be a 100 percent repeal. For example, I’m for 100 percent repeal, that’s what I want, but if you offer me a 90 percent repeal, I’d probably vote for it. I might vote for 80 percent repeal.”