Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., pauses after writing "Mean-er" on a reported quote by President Donald Trump as Schumer responds to the release of the Republicans' healthcare bill which represents the long-awaited attempt to scuttle much of President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act, at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, June 22, 2017.
The Senate bill attempts to manage this instability by buying off health insurance companies with payments that Republicans previously argued were illegal and should be stopped.
"I hope we're going to surprise you with a really good plan", he said in Cedar Rapids.
Both the House and Senate bills rollback the Obamacare expansion of Medicaid, the publicly-funded insurance program for low-income people, the disabled, and children, and both plans cap the program's funding.
And Obama called on Americans to lobby their senators, in order to slow down the Republican bill's consideration and pressure GOP lawmakers into negotiating with Democrats on the proposal.
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.
President Obama called on his supporters to contact their members of Congress to attempt to stop the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. If it passes, the House and Senate would need to hash out their differences and vote again on a compromise measure. This is a budget gimmick to ensure that the bill complies with Senate rules that forbid the legislation from adding to the federal government's long-term debt.
Unlike the House version, the Senate bill keeps Obamacare's subsidy system, albeit at lower levels.
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And like the House bill, it would pay for those cuts by dramatically reducing federal money for Medicaid, probably forcing states to make deep cuts in their healthcare programs for the poor.
That criticism comes as senators gear up to debate the bill in the coming days. The CBO estimated that 23 million people would lose insurance under the House bill, although many of them would be voluntarily giving up their insurance because the individual mandate would be eliminated.
The Senate's bill offers increased financial assistance to some lower-income Americans to help them afford increasingly expensive private health insurance.
And in a Facebook post, Obama said: "The Senate bill, unveiled today, is not a health care bill". The President said that the law of the House is mean.
The Senate bill would provide money to stabilize the individual insurance market, allotting $15 billion a year in 2018 and 2019 and $10 billion a year in 2020 and 2021.
The House approved its version of the bill last month.
Republicans hold a 52-seat majority in the Senate, so more than two GOP defections will doom the bill if Democrats are united against it. The Senate bill would repeal the tax in 2023. That language could be forced out of the bill for procedural reasons, which would threaten support from conservatives, but Republicans would seek other ways to retain the restriction.
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