WASHINGTON — Senate Republican attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act appeared in disarray on Tuesday.

After acknowledging he does not have enough votes to pass the Senate bill to repeal the ACA and replace it with a number of reforms, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell suggested voting on a bill to repeal the law and figure out how to deal with it later.

But while some Republicans like Pennsylvania’s Pat Toomey and Kentucky’s Rand Paul embraced the idea, the fallback option appeared to be failing as well on Tuesday. 

Three Republican senators, including West Virginia’s Shelley Moore Capito, said they wouldn’t support getting rid of a law that’s allowed millions more Americans to get health coverage without knowing what would come in its place.

According to several media reports, Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Susan Collins, R-Maine, also said they could not support the repeal-only measure.

Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, told MSNBC he would examine the proposal, but indicated he was leaning against it.

“If it is a bill that simply repeals (Obamacare), I believe that will add to more uncertainty and the potential for Ohioans to pay even higher premiums, higher deductibles,” Portman told the network.

Republicans can only afford two defections, but McConnell was still planning to bring the repeal measure up for a vote. 

For Capito, the repeal bill raised the same concerns that led her to withhold support for the previous bill: loss of funding for states like West Virginia that expanded Medicaid to those who made too much to qualify for the traditional program.  

Indeed, repeal would have gone farther in eliminating the funding.  While the bill senators had considered until Monday night would have phased back federal funding for Medicaid, it still would have continued to fund a little more than half of the cost for the 32 states, including the District of Columbia, that expanded the program. 

A repeal would have eliminated the funding, though Congress could have restored it as they figured out what to do during a two-year transition period before the repeal took effect.

Capito said in a statement, “I did not come to Washington to hurt people.”

Capito’s opposition to the repeal-only bill, however, could create problems for senators like her and Portman who voted for the repeal two years ago.

That vote, though, was mainly a symbolic expression of opposition to the law because Republicans knew it would be vetoed By Obama.

However, speaking to reporters at the Capitol, Paul said he hoped Republicans who voted for repeal two years ago would vote for it again.

If not, “then you need to go back home and explain to Republicans why you’re no longer in favor of repealing Obamacare,” he said. 

Club for Growth, a conservative political action committee once headed by Toomey, said supporting a repeal now would be a test to see where moderate Republicans really stand, knowing their vote actually would repeal the law. 

“It was easy for moderate Republicans to grandstand and regurgitate fiery political rhetoric when they knew repeal efforts would go nowhere,” the group’s president, David McIntosh, said in a statement.  “But now they will have to do something politicians don’t often do.  And that is keep their promises.”  

But while the bill is being termed a repeal, and would get rid of the current law’s requirement to hold insurance, it would leave several other regulations in place. Among them, a ban on insurers denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions and requiring plans to cover a minimum set of benefits.

Paul told reporters he would like to see a broader repeal but there aren’t enough votes for it. 

 McIntosh also acknowledged the latest proposal would leave several existing regulations in place and is “short of perfection.” But he supported the measure saying it is the best option Republicans currently have to begin to repeal Obamacare. 

Toomey, meanwhile, was angry Republicans failed to pass the previous bill he’d helped craft. Toomey had pressed for reducing the growth of traditional Medicaid spending. While that is not included in the repeal bill, Toomey said he would support it. 

 “I am disappointed with the failure of the draft Senate bill. History will look back on this moment and harshly judge this Congress for not beginning the process of replacing Obamacare and for failing to put Medicaid on a sustainable trajectory when we had the opportunity to do so,” he said in a statement.

Meanwhile, several other Republicans such as Georgia’s Johnny Isakson and Indiana’s Todd Young were on the fence. 

Georgia Sen. David Perdue told reporters, “Obamacare has failed. My only concern is that we’ve got to fix the situation we are in. People back home are hurting. If we can’t get this bill on the floor to vote on a repeal, we’ll have to talk about what the next steps are.”