Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
GOP to roll out secret health plan
Senate leaders say they hope to schedule a vote before next week’s holiday recess.
WASHINGTON — After months of secret negotiations, Senate Republicans are set to unveil their overhaul of the Affordable Care Act on Thursday, in hopes of voting next week before a holiday recess, leaders announced Tuesday.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., dismissed complaints that Republicans were working behind closed doors as “laughable” and insisted “everyone will have adequate time” to review what he called Thursday’s “discussion draft” before the vote.
Republicans could not estimate how many fewer Americans would have health care — the House GOP’s bill left 23 million more uninsured — but they promised a better system than the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.
“You’ll be able to take a look at it,” McConnell said Tuesday. “I wouldn’t want to compare it to the House bill. It’ll be different.”
The Republican leader can spare only two GOP votes from his slim 52-seat majority for passage, presuming Vice President Mike Pence would cast the tie-breaking vote. Pence and Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price attended the Republican senators’ lunch Tuesday in a show of support.
Many GOP senators, however, remain skeptical of the party’s approach.
Conservatives complain the emerging bill does not go far enough to gut the ACA, while centrist-state senators worry that it too quickly yanks residents off Medicaid.
McConnell did not indicate he had the majority votes for passage. “We’re going to make every effort to pass a bill that dramatically changes the current health care law,” he said.
But later, he simply chortled when asked if he was confident the bill would pass, a victory that would elude him if just three GOP senators voted no.
McConnell’s ability to line up votes is considered masterful, and he’s eager to pass legislation fulfilling a keystone campaign promise of President Donald Trump and countless GOP congressional candidates. But underscoring the uncertainty he faces, senators from both ends of his party’s spectrum were grumbling about the bill’s expected contents and the clandestine way it’s being crafted.
“It’s apparently being written by a small handful of staffers for members of the Republican leadership,” said conservative Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, using a Facebook video for a public swipe at GOP leaders.
Though a member of the 13-senator working group McConnell had tasked with piecing legislation together, Lee said he’s not seen the emerging bill and “wholeheartedly” shares the frustration of constituents unhappy over the secrecy. He said senators should have seen the measure “weeks ago” if the chamber is voting next week, the goal of top Republicans.
That echoed Democrats’ lambasting of McConnell for writing the wide-ranging legislation in closeddoor meetings. They unanimously oppose the GOP bill but lack the votes to defeat it. They fear McConnell will jam the bill through the Senate with little debate, limiting their chance to scrutinize the bill and whip up opposition against it.
“I’ve never heard of a more radical or a more reckless process,” said Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.
The White House could not yet say if the president had seen the Senate bill. Trump reportedly dismissed the House-passed effort, which he celebrated last month in a Rose Garden ceremony, as “mean.”
“The president clearly wants a bill that has heart in it,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters Tuesday.
Lawmakers, aides and lobbyists said party leaders still had decisions to make. These included how to make sure health care subsidies can’t be used for policies that provide abortions, how to curb spending on the federal-state Medicaid program and how fast they can repeal tax boosts that the ACA levied on high earners and medical companies to finance the statute’s expanded coverage.
Restrictions on abortion funding in the House bill are opposed by at least two Senate Republicans — Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — but if removed could thwart House approval of a final measure.
Underscoring the differences, a group of House Republicans drafted a letter to send to McConnell later this week expressing “serious concerns” about the Senate proposal. The House Republican Study Committee, lawmakers who advocate small government, insists on keeping the House bill’s abortion restrictions, Medicaid cutbacks and state waivers of Obamacare consumer protections.
The No. 3 Republican, Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters that the Senate effort would likely postpone until 2023 its phaseout of Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, which gave health coverage to 15 million more Americans.
Though McConnell did not schedule the vote for next week, some Republicans said they believed he would hold it either way. A loss would be a major blow for Trump and congressional Republicans, but it would let GOP senators take a definitive stance on the issue and let Republicans move on to other priorities like tax cuts.
“The leadership has made it clear we’re going to vote,” Thune said.
Even if the Senate is able to muster the votes to approve a bill next week, the legislation would still need to be reconciled with the House-passed version — pushing final passage to later in the summer.
Besides Lee, two other conservatives were also complaining.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said the Republican plan does “not yet” do enough to reduce premiums, a key GOP goal, and said it needed to go further in easing Obama’s coverage requirements. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said it would be “a non-starter” if the developing bill’s subsidies are as large as Obama’s.
Murkowski, a moderate, said she didn’t know how she’d vote, saying, “What is the deal we have? I have no idea what the deal is.”
She’s opposed conservative efforts to include language barring federal payments to Planned Parenthood, a group many Republicans abhor because it provides abortions.