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<p>Senate Republican leaders dropped provisions that would repeal two taxes on high earners in a revised draft of their health-care bill sent to the Congressional Budget Office, according to GOP senators.</p> <p>Republican leaders are now planning to retain Obamacare’s 3.8 percent tax on net investment income for people who earn more than $200,000 and couples with incomes over $250,000, as well as a 0.9 percent Medicare surtax on the same incomes.</p>

<p>Sources tell the Associated Press that Senate Republican leaders have abruptly delayed the vote on their health care bill until after the July 4th recess.</p> <p>That's the word Tuesday as the GOP faced five defections from its ranks just hours after the Congressional Budget Office said the bill would force 22 million off insurance rolls.</p>

An amendment is under consideration that maybe, just maybe, could unlock the whole Senate Republican health bill. It might knock over the dominoes necessary for a deal, starting with regulations, moving to tax subsidies, and ending up with more cash for Medicaid and fewer tax cuts for the rich. It comes with big long-term risks for Americans who have high medical costs — and it could ultimately shift the burden of covering the uninsured further way from middle-class Americans who already have insurance, and more onto predominantly wealthy taxpayers. Its author? Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. Senate conservatives have been...

Thursday on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said he and his GOP colleagues in the Senate were still at “impasse” on the legislation being considered to repeal and replace Obamacare. “I still sense we’re at impasse,” Paul said. “And I said yesterday at lunch with our Republican caucus and everybody kind of laughed because there is still quite a bit of disagreement. There’s basically two factions. There’s conservatives like myself who don’t want new federal programs, we want to repeal Obamacare. And then there’s some of the moderates who kind of want to keep some...

WASHINGTON — With his bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act in deep trouble, Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, raised an alternate possibility on Tuesday evening: Either Republicans come together in the days ahead, or he may have to work with Democrats to shore up the deteriorating health law. That raised a tantalizing prospect: bipartisanship. The idea is not that far-fetched. For years, Republicans and Democrats have explored avenues for changing or improving President Barack Obama’s health care law, from modest tweaks like raising the size threshold at which businesses must offer their employees health insurance to larger revisions...

The CBO says the Senate health reform bill would leave 22 million more people uninsured in 2026 compared to current law. That’s a slight improvement over the House bill which the CBO said would leave 23 million uninsured the same year. The CBO does note that the majority of this change next year would be the result of eliminating the penalty on not having insurance. From the CBO report: CBO and JCT estimate that, in 2018, 15 million more people would be uninsured under this legislation than under current law—primarily because the penalty for not having insurance would be...

Insurance premiums would shoot up 74 percent for the average customer under the Republican Senate health care bill, according to a new report, with older customers having to pay more than twice as much for comparable plans. The study by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation looked at the average cost for an individual market plan that covers about 70 percent of medical costs, which is the benchmark plan under Obamacare, and factored in both the price of insurance and the amount of subsidies people would receive. -snip On average, Americans between ages 55 and 64 would see a 115 percent increase,...

Anthem, one of the largest health insurers in the country, endorsed the Senate healthcare bill, saying that it will stabilize the individual insurance market and lower premiums. Anthem declared that the Senate bill “will markedly improve the stability of the individual market and moderate premium increases.” Anthem credits the bill’s $100 billion stabilization fund, eliminating a tax on health insurance plans, and the bill’s work toward “aligning premium subsidies with premium costs.” Anthem also criticized the bill’s changes to Medicaid. It added that “the challenges the current bill proposes to the Medicaid program knowing how important it is to achieve...

This is an Excerpt. Republican Senator Susan Collins of ME said on Sunday she has extreme reservations about the U.S. Senate's healthcare overhaul and does not think it will be able to pass this week. The proposal released Thursday calls for a slower phase-out of the Medicaid expansion than a bill adopted earlier by the House.... Rand Paul, who has rejected the plan along with fellow Republican Senators Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and Ron Johnson, said fundamental problems remained that would leave taxpayers subsidizing health insurance companies. So it is possible that Mr. McConnell views the potential failure of a...

One of the central campaign promises of Republicans since 2010, which has helped them sweep elections nationwide including the White House last year, has been their vow to repeal and replace Obamacare with a customer-centered, free market solution. Indeed, the promise was likely a significant reason some reluctant voters chose to vote for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton last year. And once Trump won the White House, he continued to promise a repeal and replace of Obamacare would come in the immediate days of his presidency. However, the initial effort by House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and the White House...

Senate Republicans and the White House are facing down an increasingly daunting challenge to secure the votes necessary to pass legislation before the July 4 congressional recess that would make dramatic changes to President Obama’s signature health care law. At least five Republicans have already come out against their party’s bill — which can only afford to lose two votes — and over the weekend more began expressing serious reservations and skepticism about the proposal, saying they would like more time to debate and tweak the plan. A key moment will arrive early this week when the Congressional Budget Office...

Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price Sunday tried to persuade reluctant Republican senators and governors that the healthcare bill in the upper chamber is going to make life easier for millions of Americans. Price told CNN he believes many Republicans who have come out against the bill misunderstand the Trump administration's plan for healthcare. In responding to comments made by Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nevada, last week saying that the second biggest healthcare lie was the Senate bill would bring premiums down, Price said the bill is a part of a larger plan that would accomplish that goal. "The...

The current plan in the Senate, much like the House version of the bill, does not repeal Obamacare. In fact, it is only a stay of execution and sets the Republican Party up for failure and possible total collapse in 2018, where a rejuvenated Democrat Party will resume control and usher in single-payer healthcare. No one in the GOP, and no one even in most of the conservative blogosphere and in talk radio other than perhaps Mark Levin and Andrew Wilkow on Sirius XM Patriot 125 (12pm-3pm EST), are talking about the root cause of the issue. Federal regulations, subsidies,...

Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” while discussing the Republican health care bill, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said he would vote for a partial repeal of Obamacare, but the current bill was “not anywhere close to repeal.” Paul said, “I’ve been telling leadership for months now that I will vote for a repeal and it doesn’t have to be a 100 percent repeal. For example, I’m for 100 percent repeal, that’s what I want, but if you offer me a 90 percent repeal, I’d probably vote for it. I might vote for 80 percent repeal.”

People accuse me of imagining that everything President Trump does is brilliant (persuasion-wise) no matter what he does. But I expect the next version of the Republican healthcare bill to be a complete failure. That’s because Republicans seem deeply committed to a losing path, thanks to what might be called the Contrast Problem. Contrast is the driving principle behind all decisions. You have to know how your options differ, and by how much, or else you have no basis for a decision. President Obama solved for the contrast problem by designing Obamacare to cover more people than before. The rest...

AFGE: Millions of veterans, low-income Americans could lose health care coverage WASHINGTON – American Federation of Government Employees National President J. David Cox Sr. released the following statement in response to the Senate’s draft legislation dismantling the Affordable Care Act:“The Senate’s bill follows the same failed approach as the House-passed bill. It would deny health care coverage to millions of Americans in order to lavish huge tax cuts on corporations and the wealthiest 1 percent.“The Senate bill would cut Medicaid even deeper than the House bill, and both bills could leave millions of veterans unable to afford health insurance...

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview that he thinks the Senate healthcare bill “looks too much like Obamacare.” Senator Rand Paul joined Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT), Ron Johnson (R-WI), and Ted Cruz (R-TX) in opposition to the Senate bill. The coalition of conservative senators argue that the legislation does not do enough to repeal Obamacare. Senator Paul explained his opposition to the newly released Senate healthcare bill: I think the bill looks too much like Obamacare. It really doesn’t look like a repeal bill. It looks like we’re keeping Obamacare, it keeps probably 100 percent...

Four conservative U.S. Republican senators said on Thursday they are not prepared to vote for the Senate Republican healthcare proposal unveiled on Thursday when it comes to the floor, probably next week. "Currently, for a variety of reasons, we are not ready to vote for this bill, but we are open to negotiation and obtaining more information before it is brought to the floor," the senators -- Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Ron Johnson, and Ted Cruz -- said in a joint statement. The draft bill would not repeal Obamacare and lower healthcare costs, they said.

The health-care proposal unveiled by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Thursday came under immediate attack from conservative and centrist Republican senators as well as industry officials, casting the bill’s viability into doubt even as GOP leaders plan to bring it to a final vote next week. The 142-page bill, which McConnell (R-Ky.) released after weeks of drafting it in secrecy, drew swift criticism from hard-right senators who argued it does not go far enough in undoing Barack Obama’s signature health-care law — the Affordable Care Act. It also prompted an outcry from centrist senators and medical organizations worried that...

Before explaining I must state this is written with a servant’s heart. It is not my intention to debate the arguments or merit of legislation, only to point out the logical pathway if people hang tough, support President Trump and stay out of the traps laid by special interests (and their special-interest paid troll army). (snip) ♦Unions don’t want health insurance back in/on their liabilities. ♦U.S. CoC Multinational Corporations (Wall Street) don’t want the liability of worker health insurance back on their ledgers. ♦Big Pharma does not want limits to how much they can charge (profits) and they want a...