Rep. Pete King (R-NY) voted for the House bill to repeal and replace Obamacare, but he said Monday that he may not be able to support the latest attempt to repeal the health care law that’s currently gaining steam in the Senate.
“Right now, I don’t see how I could vote for it,” King told the Washington Post. “It’s extremely damaging to New York.”
He told the Post that New York would “do worse as far as Medicaid funds” go in the bill pushed by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) than under the legislation passed through the House earlier this year. King said that he voted for the House bill assuming that Senate’s version would include more funding for Medicaid.
“Whether it was right to have the Medicaid expansion in the first place, the fact is, it’s in place now,” he said. “You have local governments and hospitals, basically the health-care apparatus in New York, is conditioned and based upon getting that funding, and it would be extremely damaging.”
He said that the Graham-Cassidy bill appeals “to the rural states at the expense of the urban, suburban states like New York.”
“So as of now, I’m a no, and I don’t see myself changing on that,” he said.
New York Republicans in the House may also be skeptical of the current Senate bill because it does not include a New York-specific amendment called the “Buffalo Buy Out” included in the legislation passed by the House. Rep. Tom Reed (R-NY) told the Washington Post he was unsure about the Senate bill given that it does not include that amendment.
