Moderate Sen. Dean Heller became the fifth Republican to oppose the newly released Senate Republican leadership’s Obamacare reform bill on Friday.
“In this form, I will not support it,” Heller announced at an afternoon press conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, reported CNBC. As he stood beside Gov. Brian Sandoval, he pinned his lack of support for the bill to changes that would be made to the Medicaid program, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell unveiled the closely guarded Senate Republican leadership’s version of healthcare reform on Thursday. The bill comes despite House passage of it’s own Obamacare replacement bill, the American Health Care Act (ACHA). Senate leadership has faced criticism from other Senate Republicans for not involving them in the process of drafting the bill.
Republican Sens. Rand Paul (KY), Ted Cruz (TX), Mike Lee (UT) and Ron Johnson (WI) announced opposition to the bill shortly after the bill’s release. “I think the bill looks too much like Obamacare,” Paul told Breitbart News. “It really doesn’t look like a repeal bill. It looks like we’re keeping Obamacare, it keeps probably 100 percent of the Obamacare subsidies. In fact, we have estimated that it may have more subsidies than Obamacare.”
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