When Will the Senate Vote to Pass the American Health Care Act?

American Health Care Act

A joint session of Congress meets to count the Electoral College vote from the 2008 presidential election on January 8, 2009 in Washington, DC. (Getty)

The House of Representatives has just passed the American Health Care Act. Now, the Senate must pass the bill as well, so when should we expect this to happen? About how long is there to go before the bill can become a law?

Right now, there is no definitive timeline, but we’re likely talking about a matter of months or at least a few weeks. Although President Trump and House Republicans were in high spirits today, this should not be misinterpreted as meaning the fight to repeal and replace Obamacare is almost finished. Rather, it has only just begun.

Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn told NBC News today that the Senate is going to take its time in voting on the American Health Care Act.

“I assume that we will be…in the same posture that the House was: When we have 51 Senators we’ll vote, but not before that,” he said.

Cornyn did not provide any specific dates, but he told NBC News that we should expect the process to “take a while.”

It will be an especially long process if it turns out that the Senate does not even vote on this version of the bill. The Washington Examiner reported on Thursday that the Senate is going to vote on its own version of the health care law, a completely different version than the one the House passed.

Cornyn reiterated to The Washington Examiner that there is “really no deadline” for getting the bill passed.

What will likely happen here is that the Senate will pass its own version of the bill sometime in the next few weeks. Then, the House and the Senate will work out a compromise in a conference committee, at which point the House and the Senate have to vote again on that compromise.

Clearly, then, there is a long road ahead here. And for reference, in 2009, the House voted to pass a version of the Affordable Care Act in November 2009, but the final bill would not be signed into law until four months later, on March 30th, 2010.