Who Are the GOP Representatives Who Voted Against the Health Care Bill?

By Jim Jamitis | 4:50 PM on May 04, 2017

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As RedState reported earlier, the American Health Care Act was passed by the House of Representatives today. Not everyone in the Republican caucus was on board though. Twenty GOP Representatives voted “no” on the bill which is being sold as a “repeal and replace” for Obamacare.

Only one Freedom Caucus member was a nay.

Only one member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, freshman Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), voted against the measure because it didn’t go far enough to fully repeal the healthcare law. Two other libertarian-minded conservatives, Reps. Thomas Massie (Ky.) and Walter Jones (N.C.), also opposed it.

GOP opposition to the bill mostly came from the mushy middle.

Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) was the only co-chair of the centrist Tuesday Group to vote no. Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), a leadership ally, and Tom MacArthur (R-N.J.), who negotiated the state waiver amendment, supported the bill.

Reasons for the no votes varied but most came from moderate Republicans in districts being targeted by Democrats in 2018.

Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.) was among the few to cite the lack of a CBO score as a reason for why he’d vote against the bill on Thursday.

“I’m sympathetic to leadership’s challenge — getting 216 votes in this highly polarized environment isn’t easy. Also, as I have stated in the past, I’m certainly not going to vote on a bill of this magnitude that hasn’t been fully scored by the Congressional Budget Office and whose estimated price tag is unknown,” Coffman said in a statement hours before the vote.

Other centrists who voted against the bill were Reps. Barbara Comstock (Va.), Ryan Costello (Pa.), Dan Donovan (N.Y.), Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.), Jaime Herrera Beutler (Wash.), Will Hurd (Texas), John Katko (N.Y.), Leonard Lance (N.J.), Frank LoBiondo (N.J.), Patrick Meehan (Pa.), Dave Reichert(Wash.), Chris Smith (N.J.) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Fla.).

All of the centrists except for Smith and Dent represent districts being targeted by the House Democratic campaign arm.

The remaining two Republican defectors, Ohio Reps. Mike Turner and David Joyce, are typically reliable leadership allies, but weren’t able to support the legislation this time.

“This bill will leave our most vulnerable citizens with inadequate health coverage. I cannot support a health plan to replace Obamacare that puts my constituents’ health benefits at risk,” Turner said in a statement after the vote.