Collins Joins Dems In Voting For Insurance Company Amendment

Collins broke with Senate Republican leadership and voted with Democrats on a key vote.

Collins broke ranks and voted in favor of a Democratic-backed motion to send the Senate’s $70 billion budget reconciliation package back to committee for further review.

The procedural motion, offered by Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), sought to recommit the legislation to the Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate allegations that insurance companies have improperly denied medical treatment and coverage to patients.

Collins’ vote placed her at odds with most Senate Republicans, who opposed delaying the legislation and argued that the reconciliation package should continue moving through the legislative process without additional committee review.

The motion failed by a vote of 47-50.

“Let’s ban insurance companies from denying or delaying medically necessary healthcare to Americans,” Ossoff said on the Senate floor when introducing his amendment.

He shared with fellow senators the challenges faced by a constituent diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a rare blood cancer, who struggled to get her medical care covered by her insurance company.

“Across America, insurance companies continue to deny and delay medically necessary healthcare,” Ossoff added.

Ossoff’s motion was similar to one he proposed during the Senate budget resolution in April, which aimed to create a point of order against any budget reconciliation bill that did not address insurance companies delaying or denying medical care, said the outlet.

Collins joined two other Republicans – Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) – in supporting Ossoff’s amendment in April.

But Sullivan and Hawley both voted against the amendment.

If Ossoff’s motion had passed, it would have annihilated the budget reconciliation bill, which would provide funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol through 2029 if signed into law by President Trump.

This comes as renewed pressure over Congress passing the SAVE America Act.

House Speaker Mike Johnson recently met with President Trump to discuss the bill and the importance it will have on ensuring election integrity across the country.

During an interview on Fox News, the Speaker revealed that the U.S. House will pass the SAVE America Act “one more time” through a budget reconciliation process.

“The big urgency is to get SAVE America passed. The president has that as a top priority, and so do I,” Johnson said.

Johnson’s approach would attempt to overcome that problem by including the SAVE America Act in a budget reconciliation bill.

That “will be the way to get it through the Senate and finally to the president’s desk,” Johnson said.

The reconciliation push would almost certainly fail in the Senate, which has strict rules limiting what can be included in budget bills.

It wouldn’t be the first time the bill failed to ram through the U.S. Senate.

But House Republicans are not backing down.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) bashed his counterparts in the Senate for not supporting the SAVE America Act.

“Are you that weak? That’s my question to any Republican senator — are you that weak? To where if you vote for a valid ID to be shown to vote, you’re gonna get beat in your home state?” Comer said during an appearance on Fox News’s “The Big Weekend Show.”

“I mean, if you’re that weak, you don’t need to be a United States senator,” he added.

“All that I’m hearing from the Senate leadership is that they don’t have the votes,” Comer said, unless Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) is “talking exclusively” with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.).

“Not only do they not have 60 votes, they don’t have 50 votes — which I don’t believe that,” he added, referring to a simple majority vote that would occur if senators voted to eliminate the filibuster, as pushed by President Trump.