President Trump called Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) on Tuesday in an effort to revive ObamaCare repeal legislation.
The call is a sign that Trump is still pushing forward on the repeal effort, despite indications that a repeal-only measure the Senate will vote on next week lacks the support to advance.
Trump is also hosting Senate Republicans at the White House for lunch on Wednesday to push them to pass repeal.
{mosads}Lee announced his opposition to the revised Senate ObamaCare repeal-and-replace bill, known as BCRA, on Monday. That move, along with Sen. Jerry Moran’s (R-Kan.) announcement of opposition, meant that the measure lacked the votes to pass.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) late Tuesday announced that he would now turn his attention to a bill from 2015 that would repeal ObamaCare with a delayed replacement.
The repeal-only measure next week is widely expected to fail, given that three moderate Republican senators have already announced their opposition to even taking it up for consideration.
Trump’s call to Lee was first reported by The Washington Examiner.
Lee opposed the Senate bill because he said a conservative amendment included in it, known as the Consumer Freedom Amendment, did not go far enough.
That amendment, backed by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), would have allowed insurers to sell plans that did not meet ObamaCare regulations, including mandates on what services must be covered, if the insurers also sold plans that did.
Lee, though, objected that the measure still maintained a requirement that healthy and sick be grouped together in a “single risk pool,” which he warned would undermine the effectiveness of the amendment, which is aimed at providing cheaper plans for younger and healthier people.
Conn Carroll, a spokesman for Lee, said Trump’s focus was on getting repeal done in some form.
The Senate replacement bill, with a “full” Consumer Freedom Amendment, without the single risk-pool requirement, is one way to do that, Carroll said.
However, moving the bill in that direction would likely lose support of more moderate Republicans, who already signaled they would oppose it.
McConnell cannot afford more than two defections and still pass a healthcare bill.