House Speaker Paul Ryan urged the Senate to pass the Graham-Cassidy health care bill, calling the proposal “our best, last chance to get repeal and replace done.”
If it passed the Senate, Ryan said, he would bring it straight to the House floor vote a vote.
Speaking to reporters at a tax reform event at a Harley-Davidson facility in his home state of Wisconsin on Monday night?, Ryan said the proposal was “a far greater improvement over the status quo” and said he was encouraging all senators to vote for the plan.
He acknowledged the time crunch of a September 30 deadline means there would not be time to negotiate a bill in a House-Senate conference, and said if the Senate passed it he would bring it to the House floor.
Senate Republicans are making a last-ditch effort to repeal Obamacare before the deadline, focused on the bill from Sens. Lindsey Graham and Bill Cassidy.
The bill would repeal the individual and employer mandates as well as shift Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion funding and insurance subsidy structure into a block grant program for states. States would be given a lump sum of money from the federal government, and it would be up to them how to spend it.