The Senate parliamentarian added a new complication to Republican hopes for their floundering health care bill, ruling the GOP would need to win an all but impossible 60 votes to retain anti-abortion provisions in the measure, Democrats said late Friday.
The House passed a health care bill in May, yet Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell rewrote the bill largely in secret, prompting Democrats and some GOP moderates to call for a do-over with public hearings and bipartisan negotiations. Republicans now have 52 seats in the Senate.
In a major, and perhaps fatal, blow to any version of Trumpcare, senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough has excluded several key features of the latest bill to repeal-and-replace Obamacare as items that can not be enacted under the filibuster-immune special budget rules. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) posted, the parliamentarian's office indicated that it would still be reviewing other parts of the Senate proposal ― including provisions that would allow insurers more flexibility to vary premiums by age or to offer plans that leave out benefits such as mental health and maternity care that current law considers essential. But there are strict rules about what can and cannot be included, and those rules are enforced by the parliamentarian.
Yet the Senate's referee - the parliamentarian - can scratch policy changes that aren't related to the budget during a vetting process known in Capitol-speak as the "Byrd bath".
Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough also ruled out a six-month "lockout" period for people trying to buy insurance after they have let it lapse ― a key policy feature of the Senate bill that insurers say is vital to keeping markets stable. Bernard Sanders, Vermont independent and ranking member on the budget panel that oversees the legislation.
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McConnell spokesman Don Stewart cautioned in an email that the parliamentarian's findings were "guidance on an earlier draft" of the majority leader's proposal, "which of course helps inform subsequent changes".
MacDonough advised Friday that Republicans' long-sought restrictions on abortion funding and a one-year freeze in Medicaid payments to Planned Parenthood did not meet those standards.
Democrats said the parliamentarian decided another provision providing Medicaid savings for upstate NY counties would also need 60 votes to survive. She also said that a provision that will ban abortions if the services are paid through a new fund provided to states would be allowed. That rider was key to House conservatives accepting their version of the legislation, and Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows suggested that, without that prohibition, the bill could not pass the House on the way back from the Senate.
Republicans contested Democrats' description, saying the parliamentarian's views were guidance only. If that provision were struck, conservative support for the bill would be in doubt. It is unclear what they would do if that language was removed from the bill.
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