(CN) - Four GOP senators declared Thursday evening that they will not vote for a slimmed-down partial repeal of the Affordable Care Act without an iron-clad guarantee that the House will negotiate a comprehensive replacement in conference.
Sens. Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina, John McCain, of Arizona, Bill Cassidy, of Louisiana, and Ron Johnson, of Wisconsin tore into the so-called skinny bill, saying they'd rather see the health insurance market crash than for the skinny bill to be adopted, as is, as the replacement.
"The skinny bill as policy is a disaster," Graham said. "The skinny bill as a replacement for Obamacare is a fraud."
Graham and McCain both said the skinny bill is merely a vehicle to get the bill to conference and that it would in no way meet the needs of their respective states.
Graham said he needs assurances from House Speaker Paul Ryan "that if I vote for the skinny bill that it will not be the final product."
"I'm not going to vote for a pig in a poke," he said.
Graham said Rep. Mark Meadows, the leader of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, has told him he is concerned about a rising move within the House to simply take up the skinny repeal bill, which the Freedom Caucus does not support.
He said without those guarantees he would not support the skinny bill, which he warned would cause the collapse of insurance markets.
"The skinny bill is a vehicle to get in conference to find a replacement, it is not a replacement in and of itself," Graham said.
Cassidy and Graham have offered a provision that would give roughly $500 billion in block grants over 10 years for states to use on state-specific health insurance programs. The plan would fund the block grants through taxes already in Obamacare.
Graham and Cassidy said they hope their plan would eventually become part of the final legislation in the conference committee.
The final vote on the skinny repeal plan is not expected until the early hours of Friday morning, though the timeline on the vote remains highly fluid.
Though the specifics of the skinny plan were not final as of Thursday afternoon, the so-called skinny repeal bill would likely repeal the mandates in the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, that require most people to have health insurance and that most businesses provide it for their employees. The plan could also touch on some of the law's taxes and defund Planned Parenthood.
When asked about the specifics of the bill, Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy, one of the newest Republicans in the Senate, told reporters "it's all still being discussed."
The Congressional Budget Office on Wednesday night scored a hypothetical version of the bill that Democrats put together that would repeal the individual and employer mandates as well as a tax on medical devices.
The hypothetical bill the CBO scored, which is not an official proposal from either party, would also defund Planned Parenthood and a public health and community health center fund.