Mitch McConnell released the Senate's Healthcare Bill Thursday. Dubbed the "Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017," the 142-page proposal includes massive cuts to Medicaid, cuts to hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes for the wealthy and defunding of Planned Parenthood for at least one year. The Congressional Budget Office has not had a chance to score the Senate's bill yet. Under the House bill, the CBO found found that 23 million Americans would lose their healthcare coverage by 2026. </s> The Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017 is here, and investors aren’t remotely concerned.

Senate Republicans unveiled their bid to overhaul the Affordable Care Act on Thursday morning, amid protests outside GOP Senate offices.

It is safe to say the protesters weren’t representing owners of health-care stocks. The Health Care Select... </s> WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Senate passed a vote today to begin discussing repealing the Affordable Care Act, with Vice President Mike Pence casting the tie-breaking vote to move forward.

Two Republican Senators voted no, but there were three that were pinpointed as possible swing votes, and all three of them decided to vote with their Republican colleagues.

Senators Rob Portman of Ohio, Dean Heller of Nevada, and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia all recently said they have doubts about repealing the Affordable Care Act, but decided against blocking the motion to move forward to floor debate.

John McCain, who was recently diagnosed with brain cancer, flew from Arizona to D.C. to take part in the vote, which actually turned out to be crucial to the vote passing since it ended in a 50-50 tie with Vice President Pence breaking the deadlock.

The Senate now has to debate healthcare for 20 hours on the Senate floor as different proposals are brought up, including a potential full ACA repeal and the Better Care Reconciliation Act.

Again, today's vote in itself doesn't affect the ACA, but its the first step for the Senate to begin discussions toward overhauling the ACA. </s> Senate Republicans are set to vote Tuesday on whether to start debate on overhauling health care. Exactly what they would be debating, though, remains unclear. The Better Care Reconciliation Act, which would repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act? Or the Obamacare Repeal Reconciliation Act, which would effectively repeal the ACA, but not replace it?

Here & Now's Meghna Chakrabarti talks with Julie Rovner (@jrovner), senior correspondent for Kaiser Health News, about the politics and policy of the vote. </s> WASHINGTON (AP) – The Senate has voted to move ahead on health care legislation aimed at dismantling the Obama health law.

The vote was 51-50 on Tuesday, a victory for Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and President Donald Trump. Last week, McConnell was forced to postpone the vote, lacking the support of conservatives and moderates.

In a dramatic turn, Sen. John McCain returned from Arizona where he is battling brain cancer to cast a crucial vote on proceeding on health care.

The vote sets up days of debate and votes on repealing and replacing Barack Obama’s health care law. Whatever the Senate approves still requires a vote in the House.

A short time later, President Donald Trump praised the Senate for moving forward on health care repeal. He says a vote Tuesday to take up the Republican health care bill “was a big step.”

Trump adds that he wants “to congratulate the American people” because better health care is on the way.

Shouting “Kill the bill” and “shame,” the demonstrators stood in the visitors’ gallery and chanted. They were led out of the chamber by police but could still be heard.

The Senate chamber was packed, with lawmakers standing to cast their votes.

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 Stay Up To Date, Follow KDKA On Twitter </s> Senate Republicans have posted their updated version of the Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA), which is still in draft form. Read the full text of the draft below: </s> WASHINGTON (CBSMiami) – Senators will be back on Capitol Hill on Wednesday to continue debate on repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare.

Tuesday night, by a vote of 43-57 the Senate Republican plan to repeal and replace the health care law failed on a procedural vote.

The Senate adjourned but will return at 9:30 a.m. to resume debate and consideration of amendments to a Republican health care bill. The next series of votes is expected at 11:30 a.m.

The vote on that bill took place just hours after they decided, by the narrowest margin possible, to proceed with debates on health care.

“We’re now one step closer to liberating our citizens from this Obamacare nightmare,” said President Donald Trump during a press conference Tuesday afternoon.

Wednesday’s debate will focus on the American Health Care Act (AHCA), the GOP plan that passed the House of Representatives in May.

Numerous amendments will now be offered that will dramatically change the nature of the House-passed legislation. Some amendments include a proposal to repeal and replace Obamacare, while another could simply repeal the 2010 health care law in its entirety and provide Congress with two years to figure out a replacement health care plan.

Nine Republicans came out against Tuesday night’s amendment in the first of what is expected to be many versions of the bill headed to the Senate floor this week.

“Anyone who thinks this is over is sadly mistaken, there are many many Republicans who don’t like this bill who don’t want to vote for it, they’re under enormous pressure to vote for it,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-NY.

The House plan, which was rejected by the Senate, is the one that, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, would’ve resulted in 22 million fewer people with health care coverage by 2026. </s> The Steps Ahead For The Senate On Health Care

The Senate has voted to debate their measures on health care overhaul. Steve Inskeep talks with reporter Noam Levey of the Los Angeles Times about the latest.

President Trump took an opportunity yesterday to repeat a simple promise.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We're going to give you great health care.

INSKEEP: The promise has been straightforward to make. The problem is keeping it. The president himself said shortly after taking office, nobody knew, nobody knew health care could seems so complicated. Now the United States Senate is confronting that reality. Lawmakers voted yesterday to begin debate on repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act with something or with nothing, no clear idea what the plan is. Senator John McCain's vote was crucial. He returned from surgery and a cancer diagnosis to cast that vote in favor of starting debate. And then, as other senators listened, he said they're not doing it right.

JOHN MCCAIN: Why don't we try the old way of legislating in the Senate, the way our rules and customs encourage us to act? If this process ends in failure, which seems likely, then let's return to regular order.

INSKEEP: Senators then suffered an initial failure. A replacement plan was blocked last night. Noam Levey is national health care reporter for the LA Times. And he's on the line. Good morning.

INSKEEP: So the basics first, what actually did the senators commit to with the vote to begin debate?

LEVEY: So what they're technically doing is bringing up the repeal and replace bill that passed the House of Representatives in May. But in practical terms, what this means is that the Senate has begun debating potential replacements for that replacement.

INSKEEP: Oh, because nobody believes that that measure from the House would pass the Senate in that form.

INSKEEP: And then they put this other proposal on the table last night. What proposal was it that they killed?

LEVEY: Well, Senator - Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had come up with his preferred repeal and replace bill, which had been slightly modified over the last couple of weeks in the course of negotiations with conservative Republican senators, like Ted Cruz, more centrist Republican senators like Rob Portman, who are concerned about Medicaid. That was viewed as one possible option for Republicans. But that - it didn't even come close.

INSKEEP: And now we have another vote coming up, most likely today, on just straight repeal - just repeal the Affordable Care Act. What's the effect on the public if that were to pass?

LEVEY: Well, the Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan scorekeeper for Congress, has calculated that would lead to 32 million fewer Americans with health insurance over the next decade, pretty dramatic.

INSKEEP: Which maybe explains why people don't expect that to pass either.

LEVEY: That's - that approach has always been the favorite of the most conservative wing of the Republican Party. But it has very little support with the public, certainly not with Democrats. And even many centrist Republican senators have said they won't back that either.

INSKEEP: So Senator McCain pointed out, this is a strange way to do a bill, actually. It's not the way they would normally have done it in the past. What have you thought about, as a reporter, as you've watched this story unfold?

LEVEY: Well, I've been covering Washington for almost a dozen years, which is short by the...

INSKEEP: By McCain's standards, but OK.

LEVEY: I've never seen anything like this. The normal committee process, which Senator McCain alluded to in his remarks, would send a piece of legislation, especially one as complex as this one, through a series of committee hearings in which experts would weigh in, the law - the legislative language would be submitted for analysis by the Congressional Budget Office and others so that lawmakers would have an idea of not only what was in the legislation but what the potential impact could be.

One of the remarkable things about the process we're in right now is that not only are the two plans that you and I discussed unlikely to go forward; we don't know what will go forward. That means that lawmakers, over the next day or two, will likely be asked to vote on something, anything that repeals part or all or none of the Affordable Care Act without a clear idea of how many people may be impacted by that, how many people would gain or lose health insurance, how - what would happen to insurance protections that people currently rely on. All that is a question mark.

INSKEEP: You know, when John McCain talked about regular order, some people have pointed out he was talking about this process, this technical process, but also talking about a frame of mind - wasn't he? - the idea that senators would deliberate, that they would think about things, that they would listen to one another, that if you do things under the normal rules, you'd also get input from the minority party. They might actually amend it in some way that makes it feel less bad to them, right?

LEVEY: I think that is the hope. And that's a sentiment that's been expressed, I think, with increasing urgency in Washington over the last six months. And that, in part, reflects, I think, the president. But I think it also reflects this headlong rush that Republicans have been in to repeal the Affordable Care Act. And that's been, obviously, an extremely partisan an issue for seven years. But I think there is a hope, at least on the public side, that this process would have been more constructive.

INSKEEP: Wouldn't - isn't this something that Republicans - very, very briefly - Republicans decried this way of approaching things?

LEVEY: They certainly did. It was a talking point they went to time and again for the last seven years.

INSKEEP: OK, Noam Levey of the Los Angeles Times, thanks very much. </s> The first draft of the Senate Republican healthcare bill is finally here.

Called the “Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017,” the 142-page bill at first glance appears not too different from its House of Representatives counterpart, the American Health Care Act. It slashes billions from Medicaid in order to cover repeals of the tax increases instituted by the Affordable Care Act, and undoes core components of Obamacare, such as the individual mandate for consumers to purchase health insurance.

More details of what’s in the Better Care act will be coming throughout the day. Most members of Congress and policy experts — shut out of the covert process by which the bill was crafted over the past few weeks — will be learning the details of it at the same time as the public.

You can read the full text of the draft bill below:
The Senate votes against the Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017 amendment.