GOP Senators To Release New Health Reform Bill, Cancel Part Of August Recess

WASHINGTON, DC — Senate Republicans announced Tuesday they will be staying in D.C. for the first two weeks of August recess as they work to pass health care reform, among many other significant legislative items. They blamed the slow pace of legislative work on the obstruction of Democrats.

"We will be in session the first two weeks in August, that we had originally anticipated not being here; we will be here," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said. "We've got the defense authorization, we've got the debt ceiling, we've got the FDA user fee and other important legislation that we need to address. And as a result of this obstructionism, we don't have enough time to address all these issues."

Congress members usually spend the month of August in their home states, where they frequently meet with constituents and spend time with their families. (For more information on this and other political stories, subscribe to the White House Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts.)

McConnell also said that a new version of the Senate's health care reform bill, meant to fulfill the party's promise to repeal and replace Obamacare, will be released Thursday. A CBO score of the bill will come out next week.

According to Vox's Sarah Kliff, the Senate health care bill could surreptitiously allow insurers to essentially discriminate against people with preexisting conditions, as they did before Obamacare was implemented.

"These changes result from a little-noticed provision that lets self-employed Americans opt out of the individual market and buy into the health plans that large employers provide, which have more lax regulatory standards," Kliff writes.

These plans could potentially be allowed to exclude people with serious health conditions, which would mean that sicker people would be stuck in the individual insurance market. But if healthy people and sick people are separated into two different insurance pools, the price for covering a sick person will skyrocket — effectively preventing many people with preexisting conditions from buying care.

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Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images