Health care fight shifts to Senate, where GOP wants a reboot

The campaign will run in congressional districts in 15 states. But the American Health Care Act, as the bill is named, is also expected to leave millions of people without coverage.

Some senators have already voiced displeasure with the health care bill that cleared the House last week. Yes, the Democrats succeeded in mandating that individuals buy insurance and employers provide affordable options to full-time employees, which expanded coverage and mandated benefits, but it also caused insurers in many states to opt out of the market and made premiums rise faster for many people who were already covered.

A moderate Republican, Sen. The Senate may or may not act on all or parts of the bill, and if they do, it will come back to the House for yet another vote.

"This president is willing to think outside the box and do things differently around here in order to change Washington, " Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said on CBS' "Face the Nation" on Sunday. Using special rules, the Senate could pass its version of the bill with just 50 votes and rely on Vice President Mike Pence to break a tie.

"I do not believe the federal government should be the decision-maker on health care", said U.S. Rep. Kristi Noem, R-S.D.

Democrats also targeted Republican governors in Democratic-leaning states, including Maryland's Larry Hogan, who did not take a public position before the House vote.

If it takes shutting down the USA government to fix a broken budget appropriations process, that's acceptable to the White House, said budget director Mick Mulvaney.

Major medical and other organizations, including the American Medical Association, oppose the bill. House Speaker Paul Ryan, who appeared on This Week before Collins, said it does.

Appearing on Friday morning on MSNBC, House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, Republican of Louisiana, was asked whether everyone with a preexisting condition who now has affordable health care coverage would continue to be covered affordably if the AHCA becomes law. MacArthur wrote an amendment that satisfied some lawmaker's concerns about how the bill would treat people with pre-existing medical conditions. Senate leaders say they are writing their own health care bill.

But he's defending the House version anyway.

Republicans are celebrating the passage of a new healthcare bill through the House, but their fight to repeal and replace Obamacare is far from over.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said the House bill poses "more questions than answers about its consequences".

Don Stewart, a senior aide to McConnell, said critics were getting "hung up on process" while ignoring the problems of Obamacare such as higher costs and limited choices. The bill, which seeks to replace Obamacare, now heads to Senate.

Ryan acknowledged the Senate is likely to make changes to the House bill.

After dozens of symbolic votes, House Republicans finally pushed through a bill to gut Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act, with President Donald Trump hailing the replacement as "a great plan" that has "really brought the Republican Party together".

The Senate will not be voting on the proposed healthcare act as is.

Another outcome of the House having passed the AHCA, the senator offered, is that it could keep Congress from making improvements to the current health care system, like bringing down premiums and increasing coverage. But the White House said his objection should not be seen as a shift in policy, but as a statement of his view that the provision could conflict with his constitutional authority and duties in some circumstances.

"I told Congressman Duffy we the taxpayers cover his family of 10 with quality health insurance", Luedke said.

She spoke on ABC's "This Week".

The House bill, passed 217-213, would end the health care law's fines on people who don't buy policies and erase its taxes on health industry businesses and higher-earning people. "The commissioner still feels that states should have more control over health insurance, " said Glenn Allen, an insurance department spokesman, on Thursday.

A key tenet underlying the GOP plan is to give states more authority over how to structure their health care markets.