Washington — Republican US Senate leaders, struggling to keep a seven-year promise to end Obamacare, turned their focus on Wednesday to passing a slimmed-down "skinny" repeal measure that would throw the issue into negotiations with the House of Representatives. The last-ditch effort came after senators voted 55-45 against a straight repeal of Obamacare, which would have provided for a two-year delay in implementation to give Congress time to work out a replacement. Seven Republicans opposed the measure. It was the Senate's second failure in 24 hours to repeal the 2010 Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, which expanded health insurance to about 20 million people, many of them low-income. On Tuesday, senators rejected the repeal-and-replace plan Republicans had worked on since May. The failures underscored the party's deep divisions on the role of government in helping provide access to healthcare as the Senate conducted its second day of a freewheeling debate that cou...
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