Dems refuse to alter health-care deal

Top Senate Democrats rejected White House demands Friday to add provisions weakening the Obama health-care law to a bipartisan deal on steadying unsettled insurance markets. The compromise already faced an uphill path and this was the latest blow.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said the Trump administration was involved in the negotiations that produced the accord and “should support it instead of floating other ideas

that would further the sabotage both parties are trying to reverse.”

Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, lead Democratic author of the deal, said, “I’m certainly not interested in changing our bipartisan agreement to move health care in the wrong direction.”

The two Democrats were reacting to a White House official who said the measure must provide language lifting the tax penalties President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act imposes on people who don’t buy coverage and employers who don’t offer plans to employees. The White House also wants provisions making it easier for people to buy low-premium policies with less coverage, said the official, who was not authorized to describe the demands on the record.

Top Senate Democrats on Friday rejected demands to add provisions weakening President Barack Obama’s health care law to a bipartisan compromise aimed at stabilizing insurance markets. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said the Trump administration should stop trying to “further the sabotage both parties are trying to reverse.”

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Sen. Lamar Alexander, RTenn., reached an accord this week restoring federal subsidies to insurers that President Trump blocked. It would also give insurers flexibility to escape some requirements under Obama’s overhaul. The Trump administration wants provisions lifting penalties on people who don’t buy policies.