GOP will change tactics on Medicare
Effort at privatization will end; Republicans focused on repealing health care law
“To me the only thing that makes a real difference now is are we going to have a vote to repeal Obamacare.” REP. tIM HuELSkAMP KaNsas RepubliCaN
WASHINGTON — Aiming to acquire more budget powers and knock the Affordable Care Act, Republicans will likely scrap a proposal that stirred controversy and helped launch Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., on the national stage: privatizing Medicare.
Ryan’s bold Medicare “premium support” plan would be sacrificed to ensure passage of Congress’ first full budget in six years and allow Republicans a rare opportunity to use a powerful procedural tool to ease passage of other legislation.
Dropping the fiscal conservative’s signature plan, which had little chance of enactment, is one sign of how the Republican-controlled House and Senate are trying to show they can govern effectively as they seek to win the White House in 2016.
Republicans are hoping to use the power known as budget “reconciliation” to pass a bill to repeal or replace President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, a long-standing goal of the party.
For many House Republicans, a shot at dismantling the health law has become the overarching budget goal, eclipsing other partisan policy proposals driven by tea party conservatives to slash spending on costly federal benefits programs.
Obama would surely veto such a bill, but he could be forced to compromise more with Republicans if a Supreme Court ruling on the legality of the health law’s subsidies goes against the government in June.
“To me the only thing that makes a real difference now is are we going to have a vote to repeal Obamacare,” said Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan.
By invoking reconciliation, Republicans would need only a simple majority in the Senate to pass such legislation, rather than a nearly impossible 60-vote threshold to dismantle Obama’s signature domestic achievement.
Ryan’s Medicare plan, adopted by the House for five straight years, made him the guru of Republicans’ drive to shrink government and elevated him to his party’s vice presidential candidacy in 2012.
The plan calls for converting the popular fee-for-service health care program into a system of subsidies for seniors to buy coverage from private insurers or a scaled-back Medicare starting in 2024.
Republican lawmakers and aides in both the House and Senate say that a deal nearing completion to work out differences between the two chambers’ budget plans will instead use the Senate’s adoption of Medicare savings goals that are similar to those proposed by Obama this year.
“We’re going to stick with the Senate language on Medicare,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, a member of the budget negotiating panel.
Most of what will be passed in the Republican budget plan, including domestic spending cuts aimed at eliminating deficits within 10 years, will be cast aside.
The real action is just starting as appropriations committees start to craft fiscal 2016 spending bills for government agencies and the military. Debate over these spending levels will come to a head this fall; a new government shutdown deadline looms on Oct. 1 with a federal debt limit increase needed perhaps a month later.
Tinkering with Medicare has long been deemed politically risky, especially for candidates in states with large senior citizen populations, such as Florida, Arizona, West Virginia, Maine and Iowa.
Ryan ignored such logic when he floated his Medicare plan as part of his first budget in 2011. It was a bombshell, prompting Democrats to claim it would gut Medicare’s promise of guaranteed health care and “voucherize” the program.