Susan Collins wasn't invited to the emergency GOP health-care meeting

(Image credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

published 19 July 2017

Senate Republicans apparently waited until the very last minute to tell Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) about their emergency meeting on health care Wednesday night. Collins, one of three Republican senators so far to oppose Senate Republicans' proposal to repeal ObamaCare now and replace it later, claimed she did not find out about the meeting until "this afternoon."

"I guess it's open invitation but I didn't know that until it was brought up at the White House," Collins said, referring to the health-care luncheon President Trump hosted earlier Wednesday. She said she won't be able to attend tonight's meeting because she's "already committed to something else."

The meeting, called as Senate Republicans scramble to vote on some sort of health-care reform before the August recess, is intended for Republicans to talk out their differences after the latest bill to repeal and replace ObamaCare simultaneously failed earlier this week. Politico reported that supporters of repealing ObamaCare without a replacement in hand were hopeful that "key holdouts and skeptics attend" the Wednesday meeting so they could be convinced to get onboard.