GOP senator: Obamacare replacement has ‘zero’ chance of passing Senate as is

Hours after the GOP-controlled House narrowly passed a bill to repeal and replace ObamaCare, a Republican senator said the bill has “zero chance” to pass the Senate as is.

Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., said the sweeping health care passed Thursday will not pass quickly through the Senate without major adjustments. The New York Post reported that moderate sentors are concerned about the bill’s Medicaid reductions.

“The safest thing to say is there will be a Senate bill, but it will look at what the House has done and see how much of that we can incorporate in a product that works for us in reconciliation,” Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., told The Washington Examiner.

The revised American Health Care Act passed Thursday on a 217-213 vote.

“We’re going to get this finished,” President Trump declared in a celebratory Rose Garden event, surrounded by Republican congressional allies shortly after the vote. He vowed premiums and deductibles will be “coming down” and the Affordable Care Act is “essentially dead.”

The passage marked Republicans’ biggest step yet toward replacing the Obama administration’s signature domestic policy law. The bill heads next to the Senate, however, where it faces an uncertain fate.

All Democrats voted against the bill on the House floor Thursday afternoon, warning it would jeopardize coverage; 20 Republicans voted no. Implying the GOP would lose seats in 2018, Democrats sang, “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” toward the end of the voting.

But GOP leaders cheered the result.

“Welcome to the beginning of the end of ObamaCare,” Vice President Pence said in the Rose Garden.

Trump, praising House Speaker Paul Ryan, said he’s confident in Senate passage and predicted an “unbelievable victory.”

Democrats, though, continue to rail against the legislation that would overhaul many key provisions of ObamaCare. Lawmakers took to the floor to call it a “gut punch to America,” and a boon for billionaires and “undertakers.”

“This disastrous bill has been condemned by almost everyone,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Thursday at a press conference. She said the latest version is “worse” than the original and rejected claims it would protect those with pre-existing conditions.

“This is a scar that they will carry,” Pelosi said of House Republicans who vote for the plan.