Portman announces opposition to Senate bill
WASHINGTON — Just hours after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced he would delay a planned vote on the Senate revamp of Obamacare, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman had an announcement of his own: He opposes the Senate bill in its current form.
“I am committed to creating a better health-care system that lowers the cost of coverage, provides access to quality care, and protects the most vulnerable in our society,” Portman said in a statement.
He said while the Senate draft has “some promising changes” to reduce the cost of premiums in the individual market, “I continue to have real concerns about the Medicaid policies in this bill, especially those that impact drug treatment at a time when Ohio is facing an opioid epidemic.”
He said the Senate draft “falls short and therefore I cannot support it in its current form.”
“In the days and weeks ahead, I’m committed to continue talking with my colleagues about how we can fix the serious problems in our health-care system while protecting Ohio’s most vulnerable citizens.”
Portman issued the statement along with Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., who also announced her opposition to the proposal as now written. Kansas GOP Sen. Jerry Moran also came out against the bill Tuesday, tweeting: ”The Senate healthcare bill missed the mark for Kansans and therefore did not have my support.”
Portman and Capito released their statement even as a bus carried Republican senators to the White House for a meeting on health care with President Donald Trump. At that meeting, Trump said he and Senate Republicans were “getting very close” to an agreement.
“This will be great if we get it done,” Trump said. “And if we don’t get it done, it’s just going to be something that we’re not going to like — and that’s OK. I understand that very well.”
Afterward, McConnell said, “We made good progress. The president got the opportunity to hear from the various members that have concerns about market reforms and Medicaid, the future of Medicaid, and Medicaid expansion. I think the meeting was very helpful.”
He said the Senate will try again in a couple of weeks. “We’re not quite there, but I think we’ve got a really good chance of getting there … it’ll just take us a little bit longer.”
Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida said the president spoke of “the costs of failure, what it would mean to not get it done — the view that we would wind up in a situation where the markets will collapse and Republicans will be blamed for it and then potentially have to fight off an effort to expand to single payer at some point.”
McConnell, who A new poll sponsored by the American Medical Association shows cutting Medicaid is unpopular in Ohio: had planned to hold a vote on the Senate bill this week, announced the change in plans during a Senate GOP caucus lunch Tuesday afternoon. Senators including Rand Paul of Kentucky and Susan Collins of Maine were among a handful of Republican senators who had already balked at the Senate’s version of the bill to replace the 2010 Affordable Care Act.
A Congressional Budget Office report Monday found some 22 million people would lose health-care coverage over the next decade under the Senate bill, though the bill would lower the deficit by $321 billion through 2026.
McConnell panned the prospect of working with Democrats: “My suspicion is any negotiation with Democrats will include none of the reforms that we would like to make on the market side and the Medicaid side.”
But Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said: “We’re the first to say the Affordable Care Act needs improvement.” Democrats are not, however, willing to kick millions of people off insurance, he said.
The last-minute decision to pull the bill before an expected Thursday vote mirrors how the House earlier this year had to delay a vote on its initial bill repealing Obamacare before narrowly passing such a measure in May.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich, in Washington on Tuesday for a board meeting with Siemans, told reporters at the National Press Club that he does not support the Senate bill as written. He said he had urged Portman not to accept “a few billion” to fight the nation’s opioid epidemic in exchange for drastic cuts to Medicaid, saying that the former would be “like spitting in the ocean.”
“He knows what my concerns are,” he said, but cautioned “I don’t cast his vote.”
Kasich said the Senate proposal lacks the resources to cover help for the mentally ill, addicted and working poor. He supports making mental health and addiction services “essential benefits” that states are required to offer, but he is more concerned that the drastic cuts in expenditures will leave people without coverage.
While the GOP’s current proposal has significant problems, “I believe they’re all fixable” if “reasonable people” are brought into the room to build a compromise, Kasich said later on CNN.
Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, applauded the vote postponement, saying it “will give the people of Ohio more time to see how it impacts their lives.”
Just before the delay was announced, a new poll was released showing that just 14 percent of registered voters in Ohio want Congress to scale back federal dollars for Medicaid.
The survey, sponsored by the American Medical Association and conducted by the Republican polling firm of Public Opinion Strategies, strongly suggests that voters in Ohio are sharply opposed to many of the features of the Senate bill.
The poll shows that 47 percent of Ohio voters say federal and state spending for Medicaid should remain the same while 32 percent want to see it increased. The poll also shows that 59 percent of Ohio voters approve of the Medicaid program in the state as it now exists.
Reaching a GOP consensus on the bill isn’t easy, as adjustments to placate conservatives, who want the legislation to be more stringent, only push away moderates who think its current limits — on Medicaid, for example — are too strong. In the folksy analysis of John Cornyn of Texas, the Senate GOP votecounter: “Every time you get one bullfrog in the wheelbarrow, another one jumps out.”
McConnell can lose only two senators from his 52-member caucus and still pass the bill. Democrats are unanimously opposed, and in recent days have stepped up protests, delivering speeches on the Senate floor for hours and holding vigils on the Capitol steps.
Medical groups are nearly unanimously opposed, too, along with the AARP, though the U.S. Chamber of Commerce supports the bill.