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A week ago, the Republican effort
to repeal and replace Obamacare appeared to be deader
than Usher's prospects on Tinder. But...
you've got to hand it to McConnell and Trump.
The tortoise and the hare put their heads together
and they figured out a way to bring the dead health care bill
back to life.
REPORTER: Breaking news: tiebreaker.
The vice president casting the vote to advance debate
on health care legislation in the Senate.
The GOP now closer to actually killing Obamacare.
I don't know who's more unoriginal right now--
Hollywood or Senate Republicans.
So many sequels.
Health Care Bill 1, Health Care Bill 2,
Health Care Bill in Space,
Health Care Bill vs. Predator.
It's-it's the one where the Predator lost
because of pre-existing conditions.
You know that one?
Yeah, it was, it was ovarian cysts. Yeah.
Oh, you thought Predator was a man? Oh, oh.
Woke up, people.
You've got cysts on your awareness.
Yeah, that's right.
Now, uh, now, the question is how did this bill
come back from the dead this time?
Well, up until now, the reason Republicans
have had so much trouble repealing Obamacare
is that their senators couldn't agree on how to replace it.
Uh, some wouldn't vote for a bill that cut Medicaid too much,
some wouldn't vote for a bill that left
any Obamacare taxes in place,
some wouldn't vote for the bill
because it was printed in Comic Sans.
It just doesn't look professional.
But then, I guess, Mitch McConnell smoked some weed
and was like, "You can't vote for a bill...
if you don't have a bill."
Right now it's unclear what the final bill will look like
and if the GOP leadership can muster the votes to pass it.
Well, now what?
Yeah, no, it's an excellent question.
What they voted today was simply to start the debate.
This was not a vote on a health care bill,
it was only a vote to begin debate on a health care bill,
and it just barely passed.
Sometime between now and maybe Thursday night
or maybe in the early hours of the morning on Friday,
they will have a final resolution of this,
pass or fail.
So the new GOP plan is to reinvent
the national health care system by Thursday?
I admire their optimism.
"We haven't been able to do this in seven years.
Let's try it in three days. Yeah!"
Oh, and, by the way, this isn't three real days.
It's technically 20 hours of actual working time.
20 hours. That's all they have.
And 20 hours is not a lot of time
to build a new health care system.
Hell, I can't even build an IKEA bookshelf in 20 hours.
And I know what you're thinking. "It shouldn't really take
that long to put together an IKEA bookshelf."
But I can't help it-- I keep getting distracted
by that guy in the instruction manual.
Who is he?
What are his hopes and dreams?
Is he naked? If so, where is his ***?
Did IKEA forget to include it
or did it just roll under the couch,
like one of those little things?
You know, the-the pointy things?
Anyway, the point is, 20 hours is not enough
to revamp healthcare.
And, now, if you... if you're really confused
by what's happening,
you're probably a Republican senator,
uh, who has to vote on Thursday.
So, so let me try and explain what you've done.
And, everyone else, you-you can pay attention if you want.
You see, Republicans, you want to repeal and replace Obamacare.
Now, you could have gone the normal way,
with the public committee hearings and proposals,
uh, both parties could have read and debated.
But you skipped that
because you knew your ideas would die of exposure.
Then you tried to write the bill in a 13-dude Chamber of Secrets.
That also failed.
So now your genius leader's new plan
is to throw the entire national health care system
out on the Senate floor, let everyone randomly spitball
on what it should be, and then you hope that 51 of them agree
by the end of the week.
And no one knows how that's gonna turn out.
Nobody knows. The one thing we do know
is Mitch McConnell is determined to pass something.
How determined? This determined.
REPORTER: Senator John McCain of Arizona,
a man who was diagnosed with brain cancer just a week ago,
comes rushing in on Capitol Hill to cast his vote.
He traveled all the way from Arizona
so that he could get to this floor
and vote yes on moving forward the discussion
of whether to repeal and/or replace Obamacare.
That's right. Mitch McConnell was so hell-bent
on getting this passed, he forced a man
who was just diagnosed with brain cancer
to come to Washington to vote.
McCain was probably like, "What the hell, Mitch?
Don't you know I could be dying?"
And McConnell was like, "If we cared about people dying,
"we wouldn't be doing this bill. Now shut up and vote.
Shut up and vote."