GOP Senators Keep Their Zombie Trumpcare Bill On Life Support

Forty-eight hours ago, GOP senators, led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), appeared ready to leave their embattled health care legislation for dead and instead attempt a likely-doomed vote on clean Obamacare repeal legislation that would put on the record those Republicans who killed their long-held dream of dismantling the Affordable Care Act.

One White House lunch and a late-night huddle later, senators appear willing to at least keep their Obamacare replacement legislation, the Better Care Reconciliation Act, on life support. GOPers emerging from Wednesday night’s meeting, held in Sen. John Barrasso’s (R-WY) office, offered few details of what could bridge the differences in their conference that had sunk the legislation earlier this week.

“We talked about what kind of changes and improvements we could make,” Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND) told TPM after the meeting.

While in the meeting, senators also received the news, via Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) had been diagnosed with brain cancer while being treated for a blood clot he had removed earlier this week. The Republicans were clearly shaken by the news—Hoeven called it “stunning”—and it also “does complicate things” for the health care vote, as Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) put it.

If McCain is not at the vote, just two more opposing Republicans could kill the bill. Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Susan Collins (R-ME), perhaps the conference’s hardest “no” votes, were notably absent from Wednesday night’s meeting.

Nonetheless, many of the approximately 20 senators seen entering the meeting stayed nearly three hours to continue discussing the issues that have driven them apart in the hopes of coming to a consensus that could move their legislation forward. Time will tell whether any actual promise was made, as GOP senators have spent nearly three months in private talks that have failed so far. At a lunch earlier Wednesday with the full Republican conference, Trump insisted that senators keep working. The expectation remains for a vote early next week.

According to Politico, Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS), who as of Monday was a “no” vote on the replacement legislation, said Wednesday that senators sought in the evening discussions to “try to figure out what is causing members not to be able to vote in favor or problems they have with the bill.”

Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma also were there, pitching the Republicans concerned about the bill’s steep Medicaid cuts on what senators have been calling a “wraparound” proposal. According to Bloomberg, the idea is that the coverage losses from the legislation’s gutting of Medicaid could be mitigated by using the bill’s so-called “stabilization” fund, what’s left of federal Medicaid funding and the tax credits for insurance—which are less generous than the ACA’s—to put those people on the private market.

Previously, some Republicans hailing from Medicaid expansion states were skeptical that the legislation’s stabilization fund and the tax credits, which together make up just a fraction of the nearly $800 billion in Medicaid cuts, could really paper over the difference.

Senate GOP leadership is preparing to offer $200 billion more to the concerned moderates, the Hill reported Wednesday night, though Hoeven told TPM that there was no “specific talk of a certain amount.”

A Congressional Budget Office score is expected on the latest version of the bill later Thursday, which will confirm just how much extra money McConnell has at his disposal to try to seal the deal.

Such an offer could perturb those conservatives with concerns about the bill from the right, however.

“To my knowledge, no decision like that has been made,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) said Thursday morning on Fox News. “That would seem to be a pretty big step in a particular direction.”