Outcome uncertain as vote on bill nears
Rep. Jim Jordan of Urbana leads GOP opposition to health plan.
— After seven years WASHINGTON of vowing to kill the 2010 health care law, House Republicans are scrambling to assemble the 216 votes they need today to scrap the law signed by President Barack Obama and substitute their own version.
As of Wednesday night, the group of conservative Republicans opposing the GOP bill, led by Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Urbana, appeared to remain united in opposition.
During a White House meeting, President Donald Trump urged a group of House Republicans to support the bill championed by House GOP leaders which would nullify a series of taxes and mandates used by the 2010 law to extend health coverage to more than 20 million people.
In addition, Vice President Mike Pence met at the White House with
conservative Republican opponents, including Jordan. With every House Democrat expected
to vote against the bill, if Jordan and 21 other conservatives break with their leadership, the bill will fail.
Appearing on MSNBC-TV Wednesday morning, Jordan said unless GOP leaders agree to “fundamental change, I do not see how they get to the 216 number that they need to pass it tomorrow night.”
“This bill does not repeal Obamacare and that fundamentally is why we’re opposed to it,” Jordan said. “The only thing worse than doing nothing is doing the wrong thing. We actually think this is the wrong piece of legislation.”
But a House Republican who spoke on condition of anonymity sounded more optimistic, saying, “I think it is moving in the right direction. It’s a question of time.”
Jeff Sadosky, a Republican consultant in Washington and a former adviser to Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, said if House GOP leaders “are within 10 to 15 votes, it won’t be pretty and the vote will be open for hours, but they’ll beg, borrow and arm twist their way to 216.”
Such an outcome would be the Affordable Care Act in reverse. When that law passed, the Democrats were in charge and not a single Republican voted for the bill.
The law, widely known as Obamacare, extended health coverage by offering middle-class people federally subsidized insurance policies in the individual market, and by expanding eligibility for low-income people to be covered by Medicaid, the joint federal and state program from 1965 which provides health care for the poor.
The House GOP bill would kill the federal subsidies and mandates requiring people to buy insurance and offer a refundable tax credit ranging from $2,000 to $4,000 to allow people to buy individual policies through federal or state marketplaces known as exchanges.
In addition, the GOP bill would scale back a feature of Obamacare that allowed Gov. John Kasich to use hundreds of millions of dollars from Medicaid to provide health coverage to more than 700,000 low-income people in Ohio.
Jordan used his appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” to criticize Kasich’s Medicaid decision, saying he “respectfully” disagreed “with our good governor. I just think he’s wrong on this.”
“Some people view success as signing people up for government health care, signing people up for Medicaid,” Jordan said. “If our plan, the conservative plan is approved, you will actually bring back affordable insurance. And that’s how we define success, bringing back insurance that’s affordable for working class people.”
Emmalee Kalmbach, a Kasich spokeswoman, responded by saying “the governor firmly believes that helping people get back on their feet is essential to our workforce and continuing Ohio’s successful track record of job creation. We appreciate support from those who understand that and we are optimistic that we can get this in the right place.”
Rep. Mike Turner, R-Dayton, said the House bill “is currently a work in process. I’m continuing to advocate for more dollars for Medicaid. That’s a significant issue and I’m very concerned about how the bill currently is structured. We’re waiting to hear back from leadership as the bill continues to move forward.”
Even if Republicans prevail in the House, its fate in the Senate is by no means assured.
There, Republicans control 52 of the 100 seats, leaving little room for opposition from the majority party.
Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, told reporters on a conference call Wednesday that he “would assume this bill will not pass the Senate.”
Brown and other Democrats offered an olive branch to Senate Republicans: Don’t abandon the Affordable Care Act completely and Democrats will work with Republicans on improving the law.
Brown said “the biggest problem” with Obamacare is “there aren’t enough young healthy people in the insurance pool. Anybody that has health insurance, anybody who knows anything about this, understands costs go up too much when you have mostly sicker, older people in insurance pool.”
In a floor speech, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told Republicans he understood their predicament of being “caught between a rock and hard place, between the prospect of failing to fulfill a shrill and not-thought-through campaign pledge and a bill that would badly hurt millions of Americans, particularly your voters — I say to you — there is a way out.”
“Drop your efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and Democrats will work with you on serious proposals to improve the existing law,” Schumer said.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office last week concluded the House Republican bill would increase the number of uninsured Americans to 24 million by 2026.