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Washington • Republicans took a victory lap this week after the House passed a bill to gut Obamacare and replace it with a new GOP version. But the move is just the beginning of a long slog to change the American health care system — one in which Sens. Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee of Utah will be deeply involved.
As chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Hatch will be one of the architects of the bill that is expected to be different from what the House passed Thursday. Lee essentially said the House version was dead on arrival.
"Unfortunately, that bill contains numerous procedural flaws and much of it will have to be rewritten," Lee said in his weekly newsletter. "In fact, it will probably have to be re-envisioned entirely."
Hatch and Lee will be part of the 13-member health care ad-hoc committee drafting and pushing the legislation. The group is expected to wait a few weeks for the Congressional Budget Office to analyze the House bill and project how much it will cost and how it will affect the health-care system before it formulates its own bill.
"It is still far too early to tell what this group will produce," Lee wrote Friday, "but the end result could end up being a huge win for the American people."
The Senate bill will need to garner at least 51 votes, and Democrats are likely to seek to block the measure, requiring a 60-vote threshold to end debate. Republicans hold 52 seats in the chamber.
"We're writing a Senate bill and not passing the House bill," Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said this week, according to Politico. "We'll take whatever good ideas we find there that meet our goals."
The process by which the GOP-led Congress is planning to jettison Obamacare and replace it with their own plan — through a procedure known as budget reconciliation — requires the bill start in the House. But the Senate could substitute all the language in the House version for its own measure.
Hatch noted after the passage of the House bill that the Senate work will be "guided by the important principles to address costs and give American families more choices."
That said, he added that it must also reflect the Senate's priorities "with the explicit goal of getting 51 votes."
"Coupled with the constraints imposed by the budget reconciliation process, we must manage expectations and remain focused on the art of the doable as we move forward," Hatch said.
Other members of the working group include: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, his lieutenants, conservatives Lee and Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Tom Cotton of Arkansas, moderate Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado, Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi of Wyoming and Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander.