WASHINGTON — Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is focusing on finding the votes he'll need to push the Republican plan for dismantling President Barack Obama's health care law through the Senate.
"No one knows the Senate better that Senator McConnell," White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Friday on Fox News Channel's America's Newsroom. He said along with support from President Donald Trump, "I think we're going to get this thing done, put it in conference and hopefully by the August recess really have Obamacare repealed and replaced."
McConnell, R-Ky., released the bill Thursday after weeks of private meetings searching for middle ground between conservative senators seeking an aggressive repeal of Obama's statute and centrists warning about going too far.
[DOCUMENT: Read text of full bill]
McConnell wants to push the package through the Senate next week and will succeed if he can limit defections to two of the chamber's 52 Republicans. Erasing Obama's law has been a marquee pledge for Trump and virtually the entire party for years.
Democrats were hoping to scare off as many Republican votes as possible by planning efforts around the country to criticize the measure. They say the GOP plan would mean fewer people with coverage and higher costs for many.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was urging Democrats to post stories on social media on constituents whose health care coverage would be threatened.
"No argument against Trumpcare is more eloquent than the grave consequences it means in people's lives," she wrote colleagues.
The bill would cut and redesign the Medicaid program for low-income and disabled people and erase taxes on higher earners and the medical industry that helped pay for the roughly 20 million Americans covered by Obama's law. It would let insurers provide fewer benefits, offer less generous subsidies than Obama to help people buy policies and end the statute's tax penalties on people who don't buy policies and on larger firms that don't offer coverage to workers.
Shortly after the 142-page bill was distributed, more than a half-dozen GOP lawmakers signaled concerns or initial opposition.
Read Saturday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.