Pressure on GOP to revamp health law grows
President WASHINGTON— Donald Trump declared Monday that “Nobody knewthathealth care could be so complicated.” Yet the opposite has long been painfully obvious for top congressionalRepublicans, who face mounting pressure to scrap the law even as problems grow longer and knottier.
With the GOP-controlled Congress starting its third month ofwork on one of its marquee priorities, unresolved difficulties include howtheir substitutewould handleMedicaid, whether millions of voters might lose coverage, if their proposed tax credits would be adequate and how to pay for the costly exercise.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office made their job even dicier recently, giving House Republicans an informal analysis that their emerging planwould be more expensive than they hoped and cover fewer people than former President Barack Obama’s statute. The analysis was described by lobbyists speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations with congressional aides.
For many in the party, those problems, while major, are outweighed by pledges they’ve made for years to repeal Obama’s 2010 law and substitute a GOP alternative. Conservatives favoring full repeal are pitted against more cautious moderates and governors looking to curb Medicaid’s costs alsoworry about constituents losing coverage.
ButRepublicans see inaction as the worst alternative and leadersmay plunge ahead as soon as nextweek with initial House committee votes on legislation.
“I believe they have left themselvesno choice. Politically they must do something,” Douglas HoltzEakin, a Republican economist and health analyst, said Monday.
Trump spoke about health care’s complexities on a day he held White House talks with dozens of governorsworried Republicans could shift a huge financial burden to the states by curbing Medicaid, the federal-state programthat helps low-income people and those in nursing homes pay bills.
Republican governors told reporters later that Trump would describe some specifics of his own plan in an address Tuesday to a joint session of Congress.
Trump also met with insurance company executives concerned that uncertainty about possible GOP changes could roil the marketplace. Insurers said they remain committed toworking with the administration and the GOP-led Congress.
Trump said the current health insurance market is “going to absolutely implode”— a contention he and other Republicans have made repeatedly.
With premiums, deductibles and other out-of-pockets costs increasing inmany individual markets, Democrats concede that changes are needed. But they contest that dire description and have no interest in helping Republicans kill Obama’s statute.
Senate Minority Leader ChuckSchumer, D-N.Y., told reporters that Republicans have yet to win any Democratic support for their effort and said “the odds are very high” Obama’s law won’t be repealed.