The US Congress should receive input from both Democrats and Republicans on the new healthcare legislation to avoid mistakes of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, Sen. John McCain said.
On Monday, four GOP senators refused to support the revised version of the US healthcare bill to repeal and replace the Obamacare. Due to the total rejection of the bill by the Democrats, the voting would result in failure.
“One of the major problems with Obamacare was that it was written on a strict party-line basis and driven through Congress without a single Republican vote. As this law continues to crumble in Arizona and states across the country, we must not repeat the original mistakes that led to Obamacare’s failure. The Congress must now return to regular order, hold hearings, receive input from members of both parties, and heed the recommendations of our nation’s governors so that we can produce a bill that finally provides Americans with access to quality and affordable health care,” McCain said in a statement on Monday.
On May 4, the US House of Representatives passed the American Health Care Act, the Republicans’ proposal that repeals and replaces Obamacare, signed into law by then President Barack Obama in 2010.
An initial vote on the measure was scheduled for late June, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was forced to delay the vote after a number of Republican senators rejected the first draft of the bill. The most recent version of a new healthcare bill, a Senate-drafted proposal, sparked criticism from Democrats and number of Republican lawmakers after the Congressional Budget Office announced in a report that 22 million US citizens covered by the current law would be without health insurance by 2026.