Within hours of the Senate majority leader unveiling a long-anticipated health care bill on Thursday, four of his Republican colleagues were quick to put a damper on things: "We are not ready to vote for this bill", the group said in a joint statement.
At the he latest vote count, four Republican senators say they cannot vote for the bill as it now stands.
Sens. Dean Heller of Nevada, facing a competitive 2018 re-election battle, Rob Portman of OH and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia expressed concerns about the bill's cuts to Medicaid and drug addiction efforts.
Also aiding McConnell is the fact that Republicans have campaigned on repealing and replacing Obamacare for more than seven years.
"I just find it very hard to conceive that I'll be able to gather all the information I need to justify a yes vote", Wisconsin's Ron Johnson told Politico. "Look forward to making it really special!" he wrote on Twitter. "Remember, ObamaCare is dead", Trump tweeted late Thursday.
In an interview with Fox News Channel, Trump was asked about the four conservatives opposing the bill.
He also said there would be an open amendment process to allow changes. Bob Corker and Mike Rounds both responded "we'll see".
Obama was more than skeptical.
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Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said the Senate bill was in some respects "dumber" and "more evil" than the plan that passed the House in May. Despite celebrating its passage at the time, the president later privately bashed as "mean" a version approved last month in the Republican-led House of Representatives, according to congressional sources. Report is expected early next week.
The Senate legislation drew support from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which said it would "stabilize crumbling insurance markets" and curb premium increases. "It does not keep our promises to the American people". Funds for the expansion would continue at the current level through 2020, then gradually decline until they are eliminated in 2024.
Planned Parenthood is already closing clinics in the state, and under the Senate's proposal, they would receive no Medicaid reimbursements for at least a year.
That's because the slow growth rate used to calculate the cost of the program would eventually cause a gap between the overall cost of the program and the funds available to pay for the it, forcing states to make hard decisions on how to make up the shortfall. Over time, however, Medicaid cuts will be even deeper than the $800 billion the House bill cuts.
Reductions in Medicaid spending in the just-unveiled health care bill written by Pennsylvania Sen. He also announced 11 panel discussions will be held across the state on the future of NY health care.
Graham said he feels "comfortable" that the Senate bill will not deny insurance coverage to people with pre-existing medical conditions, a point of contention in the House measure.
The federal government would still commit to funding the Medicaid expansion, albeit at a roughly 50 percent rate in Pennsylvania, compared to the 90 percent long-term rate under Obama's law. It hands enormous tax cuts to the rich and to the drug and insurance industries, paid for by cutting health care for everybody else.
It would also bar the use of the bill's health care tax credits to buy coverage that includes abortions, a major demand for conservatives. Thousands upon thousands of Americans, including Republicans, threw themselves into that collective effort, not for political reasons, but for intensely personal ones - a sick child, a parent lost to cancer, the memory of medical bills that threatened to derail their dreams.
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