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GOP opponents to Senate health care bill see delay as an advantage

Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky (left) and Susan Collins of Maine oppose the GOP health bill for different reasons.Associated Press/File

WASHINGTON — Republican leaders in the Senate now hope to hold a vote on the revised health care bill in two weeks, but one of the measure’s most outspoken opponents said the unexpected delay will give conservative critics more time to mobilize against it.

‘‘The longer the bill is out there, the more conservative Republicans are going to discover it is not repeal,’’ Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

‘‘I think it’s absolutely wrong,’’ Paul said of the bill. ‘‘It’s not at all consistent with Republican principles. . . . We promised repeal.’’

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, put off plans to hold a vote on the bill this week, after Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, said he would be at home in Arizona recovering from a surgery to remove a blood clot from above his left eye. McCain’s absence will leave Republicans without the votes necessary to advance the legislation.

The condition for which McCain had surgery Friday may be more serious than initial descriptions have implied, and it may delay his return to Washington by at least a week or two, medical experts who were not involved in McCain’s care said Sunday.

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A statement from Mayo Clinic Hospital said that the senator was recovering well and in good spirits at home, and that tissue pathology reports would come back in several days.

Paul and Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, for different reasons, have said they will not vote even to proceed to the legislation on the Senate floor. Along with all 48 senators in the Democratic Caucus — and without McCain — their opposition would be enough to block the bill from advancing.

President Trump did not mention the health care bill or McCain’s surgery in an angry tweetstorm Sunday morning that mentioned Hillary Clinton and the Russia controversy now engulfing the administration, among other topics.

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But leading officials with the Trump administration have spent several days trying to convince Republican governors, including those in states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, to support the Senate bill. Yet the effort led by Vice President Mike Pence at the summer meeting of the National Governors Association seemed not to change minds, and might have hardened some opposition to the legislation.

Collins disagreed with Pence’s comment to governors that the bill ‘‘strengthens and secures Medicaid for the neediest in our society.’’

‘‘You can’t take more than $700 billion out of the Medicaid program and not think that it’s going to have some kind of effect,’’ Collins said in an interview Sunday with CNN.

‘‘This bill imposes fundamental, sweeping changes in the Medicaid program and those include very deep cuts that would affect some of the most vulnerable people in our society, including disabled children and poor seniors. It would affect our rural hospitals and our nursing homes, and they would have a very hard time even staying in existence.’’

The number two Republican leader in the Senate, John Cornyn of Texas, said Sunday he still expected the Senate to move quickly, holding a vote as soon as McCain returns. But amid growing public unease over the bill, some Republicans suggested the delay will make McConnell’s task of winning enough support even harder.

In a Senate divided, 52 to 48, between Republicans and Democrats, McConnell can lose no more than two GOP votes and still prevail.

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The White House said that Trump was ‘‘monitoring what’s going on with health care’’ but did not otherwise weigh in on the growing uncertainty.

McConnell last week had refashioned the legislation to attract additional GOP votes. The new package would let insurers sell discount-priced policies with minimal coverage aimed at winning over conservatives, and revised funding formulas that would mean federal money for states including Louisiana and Alaska — home to four GOP senators who are uncommitted on the measure.

But the health care legislation was already hanging by a thread. McCain’s absence meant it would become impossible for the majority leader to round up the votes needed this week to proceed on the bill.


Material from The New York Times was used in this report.