Freedom Caucus won’t block health care bill

WASHINGTON — House Republican leaders, racing toward a planned Thursday vote on their proposed health-care overhaul, appeared to overcome a major obstacle Monday when the leader of a key group of hard-line conservatives said the bloc would not take a formal position against the bill.

The House Freedom Caucus has threatened to tank the legislation drafted by House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., arguing that it does not do enough to undo the seven-year-old Affordable Care Act. If the group of roughly three dozen hard-right GOP members opposed the bill, it could block its passage.

But Rep. Mark Meadows, RN.C., the caucus’ chairman, said Monday that while most members of the group remained opposed to the bill, known as the American Health Care Act, they would not vote to bind members to vote against it. That frees House leaders and White House officials to persuade caucus members to support the bill — a process that Meadows acknowledged was already underway.

“They’re already whipping with a whip that’s about 10 feet long and five feet wide,” he said. “I’m trying to let my members vote the way that their constituents would want them to vote.”

The Freedom Caucus’ retreat came as House leaders prepared to unveil changes to the legislation late Monday in an effort to win over enough GOP members to secure its passage. They hope to pass the bill Thursday and then send it to the Senate.

Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said Monday that the final package of leadership-backed amendments would be completed shortly. He also said that a Congressional Budget Office analysis of the changes would be available before the bill came to the House floor for a final vote.

The changes backed by Ryan are expected to address numerous GOP concerns about the legislation, ranging from the flexibility it would give states to administer their Medicaid programs to the size of the tax credits it would offer Americans to buy insurance. They are the product of two weeks of negotiations that stretched from the Capitol to the White House to President Trump’s Florida resort.

At a rally Monday in Louisville, Ky., Trump sought to bring a heightened urgency to the task: Getting health care off the table, he told the crowd, will allow him to get on with renegotiating trade deals and cutting taxes.

Trump is also expected to press for the bill’s passage in a Tuesday morning meeting with Republican lawmakers.

There were also signs Monday that the bill had growing support among the moderate wing of the House GOP, which had raised concerns about the legislation’s effect on constituents over 50 and on the Medicaid programs in states that had expanded coverage under the ACA.

Rep. Tom MacArthur, R-N.J., who had voted against the leadership in an early procedural vote on the health-care legislation, said that he was “satisfied enough that I will support the bill.”

MacArthur said he was assured that the bill would do more for older and disabled Americans covered under Medicaid and that an additional $85 billion in aid would be directed to those between ages 50 and 65.

The Freedom Caucus had pushed for a variety of alterations, from an earlier phaseout of the ACA’s Medicaid expansion to a more thorough rollback of the insurance mandates established under the law. But for political and procedural reasons, it was unlikely that any of the group’s major demands would be incorporated into the bill, threatening a showdown with Ryan and Trump.

“It’s very clear that the negotiations are over,” said Meadows, who met with White House officials at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Saturday.

Many Freedom Caucus members remain sharply opposed to the legislation. “While I’ve been in Congress, I can’t recall a more universally detested piece of legislation than this GOP health care bill,” Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., tweeted Monday.

But under the group’s rules, 80 percent of its members must agree in order to obligate the entire Freedom Caucus to vote as a bloc. No Democrats are expected to support the bill, meaning Republican leaders can afford to lose no more than 21 members.