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President Donald Trump said Wednesday he will be “very angry” if the Senate
fails to pass a revamped Republican health care bill and said Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell must “pull it off,” intensifying pressure on party leaders
laboring to win over unhappy GOP senators and preserve the teetering
measure.
Trump’s remarks came a day before McConnell, R-Ky., planned to release his
revised legislation to a closed-door meeting of GOP senators.
The new legislation would keep most of the initial Medicaid cuts and makes
other changes aimed at nailing down support, but internal GOP disputes lingered
that were threatening to sink it.
With all Democrats set to vote no, McConnell was moving toward a do-or-die
roll call next week on beginning debate, a motion that will require backing from
50 of the 52 GOP senators.
Conservative Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said Wednesday he would oppose the motion
and moderate Republican Susan Collins of Maine seemed all but sure to do the
same — leaving McConnell with zero margin for error to sustain his party’s goal
of toppling President Barack Obama’s health care law.
Several other GOP senators were holdouts as well, leaving McConnell and his
lieutenants just days to win them over or face a major defeat.
In a White House interview conducted Wednesday for the Christian Broadcasting
Network’s “The 700 Club,” Trump said it was time for action by congressional
Republicans who cast scores of votes “that didn’t mean anything” to repeal the
2010 law while Obama was still president.
“Well, I don’t even want to talk about it because I think it would be very
bad,” he said when network founder Pat Robertson asked what would happen if the
effort fails. “I will be very angry about it and a lot of people will be very
upset.”
Asked if McConnell would succeed, Trump said, “Mitch has to pull it off.”
Trump has played a limited role in cajoling GOP senators to back the
legislation. Asked Wednesday about the president’s involvement, White House
spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters the White House was providing
“technical assistance.”
McConnell’s new bill was expected to offer only modest departures from the
original version.
Its key elements remain easing Obama’s requirements that insurers cover
specified services like hospital care and cutting the Medicaid health care
program for the poor, disabled and nursing home patients.
Obama’s penalties on people who don’t buy coverage would be eliminated and
federal health care subsidies would be less generous.
The new package would eliminate tax increases the statute imposed on the
health care industry.
But it would retain Obama tax boosts on upper-income people, and use the
revenue to help some lower earners afford coverage, provide $45 billion to help
states combat drug abuse and give extra money to some hospitals in states that
didn’t use Obama’s law to expand Medicaid.
Paul told reporters the revised measure didn’t go far enough.
“I don’t see anything in here really remotely resembling repeal,” he
said.
Collins has long complained the measure will toss millions off coverage.
Spokeswoman Annie Clarke said Collins would vote no next week “if the Medicaid
cuts remain the same” as those that have been discussed.
Besides Paul and Collins, at least three other Republican senators publicly
said they hadn’t decided whether to back McConnell on the initial vote:
conservative Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Utah’s Mike Lee and Tim Scott of South
Carolina.
Cruz and Lee are chief authors of a proposal backed by other conservatives
that would let an insurer sell low-premium, bare-bones policies as long as the
company also sold a plan covering all the services — like substance abuse
treatment — required by Obama’s law.
Their plan has alienated moderates worried it will mean unaffordable coverage
for people with serious medical conditions because healthier people would flock
to cheaper, skimpier plans. Party leaders have not determined if the proposal
will be in their measure, and there have been talks about altering it to limit
premium boosts on full-coverage policies.
“If there are not meaningful protections for consumer freedom that will
significantly lower premiums then the bill will not have the votes to go
forward,” Cruz told reporters.
Lee has said he wants their proposal in the bill, or something else relaxing
Obama’s coverage requirements, for him to support it.
Their proposal endured another blow when the insurance industry’s largest
trade group, America’s Health Insurance Plans, said it would lead to “unstable
health insurance markets” and said people with serious pre-existing medical
conditions could “lose access” to comprehensive or reasonably priced
coverage.
Scott said he was still trying to determine if the legislation would help
families and consumers with pre-existing medical problems.
Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, who has fought to ease the bill’s Medicaid
reductions, has also yet to commit to back the measure next week.
McConnell withdrew an initial package two weeks ago in the face of Republican
discord that would have spelled certain defeat.
(AP)
