White House, top Dems clash on health-care bill

WASHINGTON — 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.

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 agreement, 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 demanded anonymity.

Murray reached agreement last week with Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., for a two-year extension of federal payments to insurers that President Donald Trump has blocked. The measure also would give states modest new flexibility to let insurers sidestep some coverage requirements under Obama’s law.

Failure to restore the money is already leading many insurers to boost premiums and is threatening to chase others out of unprofitable markets around the country.

Trump has alternately praised and condemned the Murray-Alexander effort. The proposal likely would garner 60 votes in the Senate, but its fate has been clouded because of Trump’s qualms and opposition from House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and conservatives in that chamber and outside Congress.