As US health care plan teeters, Republican rebels demand changes

WASHINGTON: US Republicans clashed Wednesday over plans to replace Obamacare, with President Donald Trump and top allies in Congress pitching a health care plan that is staring at defeat unless party rebels’ demands for changes are met.

Seven years after Barack Obama’s landmark reform became law — a period when Republicans repeatedly tried and failed to yank it out by its roots — the House and Senate will soon vote on a ‘repeal and replace’ effort that hangs in the balance.

After facing sharp resistance from rank- and- file Republicans, House Speaker Paul Ryan acknowledged late Wednesday that changes would have to be made to get the legislation over the finish line.

Ryan said he envisioned ‘ necessary improvements and refinements’ made to the bill.

A crucial test comes Thursday, when the House Budget Committee votes on the plan. Republican Dave Brat said he will oppose it.

He is one of three members of the far-right Freedom Caucus on the 36-member Budget panel. If the three vote no, along with another Republican and united Democratic opposition, the measure would fail to advance.

Staunch conservatives like Brat hate the new plan’s similarities to Obama’s law.

Moderate Republicans are nervous that the bill winding through Congress would cause many struggling families to suffer, a prospect highlighted by a damning congressional projection that 24 million people could lose insurance within a decade under the plan.

And Senator Rand Paul, a key opponent who wants the entire plan scrapped in favour of a clean repeal bill, went so far as to accuse Ryan of misleading Trump about what is in the legislation.

Ryan ‘is selling him a bill of goods that he didn’t explain to the president’, Paul told reporters at a Washington rally where he urged conservatives to ‘bring down the Paul Ryan plan’.

Trump and congressional Republicans campaigned relentlessly last year on a pledge to repeal the Affordable Care Act — popularly known as Obamacare — and replace it with something that lowers premium costs and allows more choice for consumers.

But the solution introduced in the House, already facing united opposition from Democrats, has been eviscerated by some in Trump’s own party. — AFP