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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's latest bidto salvage the GOP campaign to roll back the Affordable Care Act collapsed Tuesday as centrist Republicans balked at legislation to repeal the healthcare law now and develop an alternative later.

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski became the third GOP lawmaker to reject McConnell's new strategy, making it impossible for Senate Republicans to bring up the plan.

Earlier Tuesday, Maine Sen. Susan Collins and West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, said they would not back the "repeal and delay" approach.

I cannot vote to repeal Obamacare without a replacement plan that addresses my concerns and the needs of West Virginians, Capitosaid in a statement.

McConnell on Monday night floated the plan to vote for legislation repealing most of Obamacarenow with a plan to develop an alternative over the next two years.

That strategy, which GOP leaders once championed, was revived after it became clear that McConnell, of Kentucky, could not get enough Republican votes for his bill repealing and replacing large parts of the 2010 law at the same time.

But the "repeal-and-delay" planwould cause even more widespread disruption to the nations healthcare system and throw millions more Americans off the insurance rolls.

An independent analysis of such an approach by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office earlier this year concluded that it would lead to 32 million more uninsured Americans over the next decade.

That is some 10 million more than predicted under the Senate repeal-and-replace plan that was scuttled Monday night, which was projected to increase the number of uninsured by 22 million by 2026.

At the same time, repealing major planks of Obamacarewithout a replacementwould cause insurance premiums to jump by 20% to 25% next year for Americans who rely on insurance marketplaces, budget analysts concluded.

And premiums would double by 2026, according to the report.

Similar warnings came from across the nations healthcare system earlier this year when Republicans contemplated a straight repeal bill that followed the template of a repeal-and-delay plan that Congress sent President Obama in 2015 and which he subsequently vetoed.

Delaying such a replacement could create unacceptable instability in the insurance market jeopardizing the healthcare of more than 20 million Americans many of whom are cancer patients and cancer survivors with a preexisting condition, Chris Hansen, head of the American Cancer Societys advocacy arm, said in January.

Even many leading Republican senators havevoiced major concerns about repealing the current law without some replacement.

Congress should replace and repeal at the same time, which requires figuring out how to replace it before fully repealing it,Senate health committee chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said in December.

UPDATES:

10:20 a.m.: This article was updated with Sen. Murkowski's rejection of the new Obamacare repeal plan.

This story originally published at 8:02 a.m.

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McConnell's latest Obamacare repeal plan also collapsing amid more Republican defections - Los Angeles Times