McConnell’s problem is that at least five other Republicans haven’t committed to debating the bill, much less voting for its passage. “We’re not there yet,” Senator Rob Portman told Politico when asked if he’d support the motion to proceed. The Ohio Republican had just come out of a meeting with other holdouts and the majority leader, who was undoubtedly trying to persuade them to at least give the bill a chance. Senators Dean Heller of Nevada, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia also told reporters they were undecided on the question, and a spokesman for Senator Mike Lee of Utah, a conservative, told me the same. “The new Senate health-care bill is substantially different from the version released last month and it is unclear to me whether it has improved,” Lee said in a statement late Thursday afternoon.

In a floor speech earlier in the day, McConnell made an explicit plea to those senators to support the procedural vote. “I hope every senator will vote to open debate,” he said. “Because that’s how you change the status quo.”

Voting against the motion to proceed to debate could be seen as a cop-out, and the conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt quickly assailed Collins in particular for “pure political cowardice.” Supporting the procedural motion does not commit a lawmaker to voting for final passage, and indeed, there’s a case to be made that a bill that has had no public hearings or debate deserves at least some formal airing. Yet Republicans leery of the bill’s unpopularity know that Democrats will criticize them merely for helping to advance it even if they eventually vote it down. And they might worry that it will be even tougher to oppose the bill’s final passage once the pressure builds during the floor debate.

Having already postponed debate once, McConnell is intent on voting next week and doesn’t want to drag out the health-care fight any longer. And voting to begin debate would just launch another gauntlet—albeit one that might last only a couple of days. Under the budget reconciliation rules Republicans are using, the bill will be subject to nearly unlimited amendments, so wavering senators will have an opportunity to change it on the floor. But without help from Democrats, winning consensus on any one amendment among Republicans might be just as difficult as the arduous attempt to write the bill in the first place.

For McConnell, the good news is that most of the holdouts are still listening, and talking. As I wrote earlier this week, any three Republicans could end the repeal effort immediately by vowing to oppose a one-party bill and demanding negotiations with Democrats. So far only Collins is in that camp, and even she has left the door open to backing a GOP bill with significant changes. McConnell also still has more money to offer individual senators—or more precisely, their states—in an effort to win their votes. The revised bill already includes a provision designed to help Alaska in particular, which could turn Murkowski from a no to a yes.