US healthcare bill: Blow for Trump as House vote delayed

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-39375123

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A vote on President Donald Trump's new health care bill in the House of Representatives has been delayed.

The postponement is a setback for the president who had insisted he would win the numbers to pass it through the lower chamber of Congress on Thursday.

The American Healthcare Act is intended to replace parts of President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law.

Repealing and replacing so-called Obamacare was a major plank of Mr Trump's election campaign.

Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Republicans would still meet on Thursday evening but the plan was for a House vote on Friday.

A White House official said that "the vote will be in the morning to avoid voting at 3AM... We feel this should be done in the light of day, not in the wee hours of the night and we are confident the bill will pass in the morning".

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Mr Trump had made a "rookie's error for bringing this up on a day when clearly you're not ready".

Delay better than defeat - Anthony Zurcher, BBC News, Washington

After a tumultuous day on Capitol Hill, it has become apparent that there simply aren't enough votes to pass the healthcare reform law. At the moment, it may not even be close.

Minutes before the announced delay, the president himself was insisting that a vote would happen on Thursday night, so this turn of events signifies an embarrassing setback.

If success was just a vote or two away, the evening would probably have proceeded as planned, with Speaker Paul Ryan and Donald Trump offering whatever threats or entreaties were necessary to edge past the finish line. Instead, the bill remains on the edge of an abyss.

For Republicans, a delay is better than outright defeat, of course, a scenario which would have undermined both the president's claims to be a dealmaking supremo and Mr Ryan's ability to control his party's hardliners.

The White House now has more time to negotiate with the conservative House Freedom Caucus, who represent the best, possible last, chance to salvage the bill. Such support will come with a high price, however, with any move to the right making the legislation all the harder to pass in the more moderate-minded Senate.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer has all week insisted the administration would get the numbers and that the bill would pass, saying there was "no plan B".

The bill needs 215 votes to pass but ran into opposition mainly from conservative Republicans who believed it did not roll back enough of Mr Obama's Affordable Care Act.

Obamacare helped 20 million previously uninsured Americans get health insurance but has been plagued by increases in insurance premiums, which were also a problem before the health law.

Mr Trump promised a new law that would cover more people and at a lower cost.

The Republican bill keeps some of the popular elements of Obamacare but limits future federal funding for Medicaid, which covers low-income people.

A new estimate by the Congressional Budget Office released on Thursday evening said recent changes to the bill would make it costlier than previously thought.

The number of uninsured Americans would rise to 24 million by 2026 under the new law, the budget analysis said.

Groups representing doctors, hospitals and the elderly have said they are opposed to the Republican bill.