“McConnell is still planning votes on health-care legislation next week. But many things have to go right for his strategy to succeed, and not all of them are within his control.”

As we head towards next week’s vote, you might take a look at an excellent New York Magazine analysis.
Here Is Where Things Stand With the Senate Health-Care Bill , by Ed Kilgore, highlight and click on http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/where-things-stand-with-the-senate-health-care-bill.html

Excerpts:
“Getting Senate moderates to vote for a bill with a Medicaid per capita cap and the Cruz amendment is where the whole process has ground to a halt. But it seems the strategy is for McConnell to throw absolutely every nickel of funding at his disposal (somewhere in the neighborhood of $200 billion in “excess” deficit reduction, according to the latest Congressional Budget Office’s assessment of the revised BCRA) at the states to ease immediate coverage concerns caused by the rest of the bill.
But there is an existential threat to this scheme that could emerge as early as today, when the Senate parliamentarian informally lets senators know of her rulings as to whether various provisions of the pending bill (and various likely amendments) pass muster under budget rules requiring that all items are germane to federal spending and revenue levels. According to a handful of experts assembled by the Times, there is a decent chance the parliamentarian will deem the Cruz amendment unallowable. If so, that would leave McConnell with the unsavory choice of finding some way to regain conservative support for yet another revision of BCRA or, worse yet, overturning the parliamentarian’s ruling on the Senate floor. This latter contingency would, many fear, lead to a de facto abolition of the legislative filibuster, since a simple majority could at any time rule any provision germane to a budget bill, which cannot be filibustered.”