Trump on health care bill: Premiums will come down

During a celebratory press conference with House Republicans at the White House Trump said, “This is a great plan”.

“I went through two years of campaigning and I’m telling you, no matter where I went, people were suffering so badly with the ravages of Obamacare”, Trump said.

U.S. Congressman James Comer says he is “proud to stand with President Trump” in supporting the Republican crafted healthcare bill that passed the House on Thursday.

All 14 Republican House members in California voted for the bill.

Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Kentucky, was part of the group – the Freedom Caucus – who pledged to vote no the first time around because they felt the new bill didn’t completely repeal and replace Obamacare.

The changes were necessary after the original bill was pulled from the floor in March when it became apparent it would not pass.

When the health bill does come to a vote Thursday it will be without an updated analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office about its cost and affect, a point Democrats complained about bitterly.

House Republicans passed their version of the American Health Care Act on Thursday, beginning the process of repealing the Obama-era Affordable Care Act.

So the bill will likely have to appeal to moderates. The bill also sharply cuts the premium subsidies that now help 10 million lower- and middle-income people afford health coverage – and the bill entirely eliminates all assistance to help such people meet their high deductibles and cost-sharing expenses.

Under the latest version of the House bill, all 50 US states are allowed to apply for waivers from key ObamaCare provisions. “But it is an important step in reforming our broken health care system”, adding she plans to work with the Senate to “strengthen the support for those with pre-existing conditions”. Critics say these pools are often under-funded and ineffective.

An array of medical groups, led by the American Medical Association, had opposed the measure. Even though they were charged far higher rates, up to double the amount paid by consumers with no serious ailments, care for these patients is so expensive that government money was needed to fund the programs. This is partly because of voter fears that many people will lose their health insurance as a result. The GOP has been trying ever since to repeal the law even as around 20 million Americans gained coverage under it. What does it really mean and then we need to communicate with the right people. “When those individuals don’t have access to preventative care, to prevent them from ending up in emergency departments, that’s a concern to us”. No, and if it does fail, blame Republican sabotage.

“I’m looking at stockpiling, making sure I have an inhaler”, she said.

“A lot of us have been waiting seven years to cast this vote”, he added.

As Republicans crossed over the vote threshold to pass the bill, Democrats in the House began singing “Na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye”, a rowdy suggestion that Republicans will lose seats in the 2018 midterm elections due to their vote. The Republicans seemed unworried, many of them busing to the White House for a victory appearance with the president.

We hope and expect the Senate to take a more careful approach. Insurance premiums are very high in Alaska; the House bill would provide flat subsidies, unadjusted for area costs, that would make insurance unaffordable for many in the state.

As in the House, Senate Republicans will be walking a narrow and obstacle-laden path. People would only know they’re getting a cheaper policy.

Yet as the 2016 election amply demonstrated, political outcomes can be hard to predict. Republicans argued they would have had a still heavier price to pay if they failed to make good on an endlessly repeated pledge that helped them seize control of the House, the Senate and the White House in the years since the law passed.

It also put a ceiling on how much employees had to pay out of pocket for these services.

Almost every major medical group was strongly opposed to the Republican bill.

“Forcing a vote without a CBO score shows that Republicans are terrified of the public learning the full consequences of their plan”, said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.