Rep. Charlie Dent said that his parties leaders set "arbitrary deadlines" for their Obamacare repeal-and-replace efforts. | AP Photo Rep. Dent: GOP is 'probably a little short' on health care votes

With House Republican leadership looking at last-minute alterations to its health care legislation geared toward pacifying more conservative House members, a co-chairman of the House GOP’s moderate Tuesday Group said Thursday that his party bosses are still short of the votes they need.

“Well, I don't know. I haven't done a whip count,” Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “I suspect if you looked at the numbers now, they are probably a little short. I can't tell you how many votes.”


Although House Speaker Paul Ryan and President Donald Trump have both expressed confidence that legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare will pass its scheduled vote on Thursday, they and other GOP leaders have been forced to scramble to shore up support for the bill. In a move to appease members of the conservative Freedom Caucus, who have opposed the bill, Ryan and Trump have offered to consider stripping certain regulations mandating “essential health benefits” in insurance plans.

Such a move would likely make the legislation, dubbed the American Health Care Act, a tougher pill to swallow for more moderate Republicans like Dent, who announced after a Wednesday meeting with Ryan that “after careful deliberation, I cannot support the bill and will oppose it.”

The GOP health care proposal, Dent said in his Wednesday statement, “will lead to the loss of coverage and make insurance unaffordable for too many Americans, particularly for low-to-moderate income and older individuals.” Thursday morning on MSNBC, he said the proposed cuts to essential health benefits would represent a big policy change introduced very close to the vote, adding: “I don't know what those impacts are, to be perfectly candid with you right now.”

Even with the concessions to the GOP’s conservative wing, it remains unclear whether there is enough support from members of the Republican rank and file to pass the legislation out of the House. Asked Thursday morning on CNN’s “New Day” whether the cuts to essential health benefit requirements would move the Freedom Caucus closer to a deal, one of its members, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), said only that “we’ll see.”

Asked whether he still expected a vote Thursday night on the legislation, Jordan again said “we’ll see.”

Dent complained that there has been too much focus by the leaders of his party on “arbitrary deadlines.” That Thursday’s vote on the repeal-and-replace measure falls on Obamacare’s seven-year anniversary is “more symbolism, to me, over substance, and we ought to get back to the substance of this issue.”

The Pennsylvania lawmaker also said that there is a prevalent but false notion among House members that the Senate would pass the House’s version of the bill without significant change. Dent called such thinking “ridiculous.”

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“If I have one more senator tell me this bill is dead on arrival, I think my head’s going to explode,” Dent said. “The Senate, let's face it, it's a very slow-moving body. They have two speeds, slow and glacial. And on rare occasions, they can move at lightning speed. You know, every day is the same over there: They start slowly, then they wind down from there. So if anybody thinks that they’re going to move super quickly on this thing, I just don't buy it.”

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