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Article snippet: WASHINGTON — A growing rift among Senate Republicans over federal spending on Medicaid and the opioid epidemic is imperiling legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act that Senate leaders are trying to put to a vote by the end of next week. President Trump had urged Republican senators to write a more generous bill than a House version that he first heralded and then called “mean,” but Republican leaders on Tuesday appeared to be drafting legislation that would do even more to slow the growth of Medicaid toward the end of the coming decade. And conservative senators, led by Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania, are determined to hold the line on federal spending, pitting two Senate factions against each other. Senator John Cornyn of Texas emerged from a contentious closed-door lunch with Republican senators on Tuesday saying that he hoped the Senate would be able to meet the deadline of a vote before July 4. “But,” he added, “failing that, I’ve always said we need to get it done by” the end of July. The emerging Senate bill, like the one approved narrowly by the House in early May, would end Medicaid as an open-ended entitlement program and replace it with capped payments to states, Republicans said. But starting in 2025, payments to the states would grow more slowly than those envisioned in the House bill. Republican senators from states that have been hit hard by the opioid drug crisis have tried to cushion the Medicaid blow with a separate funding stream of $4... Link to the full article to read more