The United States Senate is getting ready to vote on Obamacare repeal.
The vote on repeal of the Affordable Care Act is scheduled to occur at 3:30 p.m. Eastern Time this afternoon. The vote was previously scheduled for 11:30 a.m. Eastern Time this morning, but it was delayed.
The Senate today is voting on whether to repeal Obamacare without an immediate replacement. Under today’s proposal, the individual and employer mandates would be repealed, the Medicaid expansion and federal subsidies would be ended, and many of the law’s taxes would be rolled back.
However, it would take two years for this repeal to go into effect (other than the mandate repeal, which would go into effect right away). The idea is that during those two years, Republicans would come up with an Obamacare replacement.
Ending Obamacare without a clear path forward and without a replacement on the table – sometimes referred to as “repeal and delay” – is not a popular proposal even among Republicans, and so Wednesday afternoon’s vote is not expected to be successful. One Republican who has championed this repeal and delay idea is Kentucky Senator Rand Paul.
This morning, @SenateMajLdr informed me that the plan for today is to take up the 2015 clean repeal bill as I’ve urged.
On Tuesday afternoon, the Senate voted to begin debate on repealing Obamacare. They were successful, with Mike Pence’s vote in favor bringing the vote tally to 51 to 50. Later that evening, the Senate voted on an Obamacare replacement plan, but this vote failed 43 to 57, demonstrating that while almost all Senate Republicans support the idea of replacing Obamacare, it will be difficult to find an agreement on how to go about doing so.
Repealing Obamacare and then replacing it at a later date is an idea that has been floated by President Donald Trump. He tweeted in June, “If Republican Senators are unable to pass what they are working on now, they should immediately REPEAL, and then REPLACE at a later date!”
If today’s vote is unsuccessful, the Senate will continue voting on amendments this week in hopes of passing one.