House Republicans reveal health care amendment details

Republicans need 216 votes to pass the health bill – they can afford to lose 22 votes.Already a handful of other moderates have said they remain a no vote on the bill, including Reps.

The House Freedom Caucus was instrumental in the failure of the last repeal bill, but so far three of its leaders – Reps. It also allows states to opt out of Obamacare’s essential health benefits regulations requiring that insurance plans sold in state exchanges cover a laundry list of procedures that not everyone needs, like maternity care.

The amendment from MacArthur and Meadows attempts to assuage the concerns of House conservatives who, along with a bloc of centrist Republicans, opposed GOP leadership’s original health care bill.

Before the recess, all eyes were on the conservative House Freedom Caucus, whose coalition of more than 30 members had stood united against House leadership’s health care bill. Many GOP senators oppose the House-written bill and its future should it reach that chamber is bleak.

Asked about the likelihood that the Senate would strip the measure out, Collins said, “Let the Senate do their job”. Representative Steve Chabot of OH said everyone is proceeding quietly so that nothing happens “to blow everything up”.

“Certainly, I’ve often felt that a lot of this has simply been an exercise in blame-shifting”, Dent said.

I’m sure the crowds at GOP town halls will be understanding. “For me it’s a big stumbling block, still, that there’s taxpayer money that’s being given to insurance companies, and I’m just not in favor of taxpayer money going to insurance companies”. Before that, I was in private practice, and I provided health care for – and before I was a government employee, I provided health care for myself, for my family, for my employees, because I was in private practice, I was in a private institution. But Ryan told reporters that “we’re not doing that”. He said he didn’t know if that might be this week or next.

GOP lawmakers in the House have taken the crucial step of putting their latest hope for a health care compromise on paper, circulating legislative text that could launch yet another round of health care talks just in time for the last of President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office.

Democratic leaders in the House and Senate welcomed the new developments.

In an added boost for the revised bill, a constellation of conservative groups announced support including Club for Growth, Heritage Action and Americans for Prosperity, which is backed by the wealthy Koch brothers.

The plan was crafted by MacArthur along with Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., head of the House Freedom Caucus.

Following a closed-door meeting of the Tuesday Group on Wednesday, moderate lawmakers signaled that they were hardly eager to throw their support behind the new proposal. Any changes aimed at garnering support of conservative House Freedom Caucus members could deter moderates from the bill.

– Starting in 2019, states that have certain safeguards in place – such as a high-risk pool – can seek waivers from the ACA provision that prohibits insurers from charging higher premiums to people with health problems. States getting waivers so insurers could charge higher prices to people with illnesses would have to have high-risk pools, or government-subsidized funds to help those consumers cover costs. “We have to help those people who were harmed by the Affordable Care Act, but at the same time not harm the people who were helped by it”.

“I believe there will be some movement”, he said.

Fellow conservative Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) said “80 to 90 percent” of the Freedom Caucus is “on board” with the amended bill. Recently, Rep. Warren Davidson outraged many of his constituents at a town hall in Enon, Ohio, earlier this week when he told a woman concerned about Republicans’ efforts to end the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion that her son should get a better job if he wanted better insurance.