Trump says hostility has stymied bipartisanship

Now comes his next challenge - persuading enough Republicans to back the measure and avert a defeat that would be shattering for President Donald Trump and the GOP. Erasing Obama's law has been a marquee pledge for Trump and virtually the entire party for years.

The Senate plan significantly scales back Medicaid - a healthcare programme for the poor - repeals Obamacare's taxes on the wealthy, and defunds Planned Parenthood for a year. And Medicaid covers 65 percent of the people in nursing homes.

"I can not support a piece of legislation that takes insurance away from tens of millions of Americans and tens of thousands of Nevadans", Heller said.

Under special rules McConnell is using that will block Democrats from using a filibuster to kill the bill, the legislation can not include provisions that make policy changes that don't primarily affect the budget. "President Trump is committed to repealing and replacing Obamacare, which has failed the American people for far too long".

"If you repeal it, you better replace it with something better".

"It's a very, very narrow path", the president said. "But I think they're going to get there", Trump told "Fox and Friends".

If this bill were truly about health care, Republicans would take all the tax cuts out and use that money to ease the pain their bill would cause.

Realizing they're outnumbered, Democrats and their liberal allies were planning events around the USA over the next few days aimed at building public opposition to the bill.

With unanimous opposition from Democrats, McConnell can afford to lose just two of the 52 GOP senators and still prevail on the bill.

The House approved its legislation in May. But he said it was time to act. People may lose employer-provided coverage.

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky said he and three other conservative Republicans - Ted Cruz of Texas, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Mike Lee of Utah - opposed the version released on Thursday and intend to negotiate as a team to improve it.

"Republican Senators are working very hard to get there, with no help from the Democrats", Trump tweeted on Monday.

A fifth GOP senator, Dean Heller of Nevada, has also pulled support from the bill. Obviously, those on the other side of the aisle see it as a drastic change over the Affordable Care Act, but some in the Republican party are also upset. "And as you get older, the coverage will be less and less affordable". He said amendments during the upcoming debate "cannot change the fundamental meanness at the core of this legislation".

Still, the House's health care bill was also assumed to be on bad footing before it wound up passing.

The House passed its version of an Obamacare repeal bill in May.

The Congressional Budget Office's initial review of the Senate's draft bill is expected to be released Monday.

There is some good news in the CBO report, of course. The decrease would be less than in 2020 mainly because of a reduction in the federal stabilization funding. The estimate was released Friday by Arizona's Medicaid agency, which analyzed the effects of the legislation on the state health insurance program for low-income people. That would focus the aid more on people with lower incomes than the House legislation, which bases its subsidies on age. Whitlock says McConnell may be anxious that it runs afoul of procedural rules that allow Republicans to pass the health care bill with a simple majority vote.

McLaughlin says this higher rate was created by the Affordable Care Act as a way to motivate states to expand Medicaid coverage.

"I'm watching [the developments] but I'm just going to wait and see [before I pass judgment]", unusual said.

"Changes in the federal responsibility for financing the program must be accompanied by clearly articulated statutory changes to Medicaid to enable states to operate effectively under a cap".