Dollar Dives As Republican Health Care Bill Collapses

Well, it looks like the healthcare bill is dead after two more Republican Senators said they would vote against it.

“After conferring with trusted experts regarding the latest version of the Consumer Freedom Amendment, I have decided I cannot support the current version of the Better Care Reconciliation Act,” Sen. Mike Lee said in statement, adding that “in addition to not repealing all of the Obamacare taxes, it doesn’t go far enough in lowering premiums for middle class families; nor does it create enough free space from the most costly Obamacare regulations.”

“This closed-door process has yielded the BCRA, which fails to repeal the Affordable Care Act or address healthcare’s rising costs,” Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., said on Twitter (because where else, right?). “For the same reasons I could not support the previous version of this bill, I cannot support this one,” Jerry added, for good measure.

My full statement opposing this version of BCRA: pic.twitter.com/CUq4Kibe0I

— Senator Jerry Moran (@JerryMoran) July 18, 2017

Here’s CNN’s quick summary of where things stand:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was handed devastating news Monday evening just hours after the Senate was gaveled back into session: Two more defections on his health care bill.

The dramatic and simultaneous announcement from Sens. Jerry Moran of Kansas and Mike Lee of Utah means McConnell officially does not have the votes to even begin debate on his legislation to overhaul the Affordable Care Act — and that the Republican Party’s years-long quest to kill former President Barack Obama’s legacy accomplishment is, for the time being, halted without a path forward.

That promptly sent the dollar down as Asia-based FX traders saw what they told Bloomberg was “a strong bias across platforms to sell the greenback against G-10 peers.”

USDJPY fell to 112.16 as macro and leveraged accounts added to shorts. USDJPY has now fallen to a July low:

And this was just more fuel on the fire for the euro, which was already pushing to 14-month highs. EURUSD was up as much as 0.5% to 1.1532, apparently triggering momentum buying on break of 1.1500:

Defeated, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is now going to try and repeal Obamacare with a 2-year delay.

“Regretfully, it is now apparent that the effort to repeal and immediately replace the failure of Obamacare will not be successful,” he said in statement. “So, in the coming days, the Senate will vote to take up the House bill with the first amendment in order being what a majority of the Senate has already supported in 2015 and that was vetoed by then-President Obama: a repeal of Obamacare with a two-year delay to provide for a stable transition period to a patient-centered health care system that gives Americans access to quality, affordable care.”

Good luck with that.

Summed up:

as a reminder: AHHHHHHHH pic.twitter.com/8Lcl4l8iFz

— Heisenberg Report (@heisenbergrpt) July 12, 2017

Saved you the trouble, @darth. #BCRA pic.twitter.com/OQAvS6VVk5

— Matt Ortega (@MattOrtega) July 18, 2017