Trump promises ‘negotiation’ on controversial health care bill

The credits have been criticized by Democrats as too meager to cover the costs of most health plans, and far less than the subsidies many residents received to buy insurance under the ACA’s marketplace.

Cotton’s opposition, which he’s broadcast in multiple TV and radio interviews and over Twitter, has raised eyebrows in the Capitol where a number of GOP senators have misgivings about the bill, but many are more restrained in expressing them.

The AHCA is the Republican’s plan to replace Obamacare. Republican leaders have repeatedly said that was their schedule, but opposition mushroomed after a congressional report concluded this week that the measure would strip 24 million people of coverage in a decade. Some have asked House Speaker Paul Ryan to vote on a “clean repeal” Obamacare bill first – and then turn to the task of replacing the law through separate legislation.

The American Health Care Act, Casey said, “would have adverse results”.

MacArthur said he’s not committed to voting for the bill as written.

Republican leaders in the House and Senate have been pointedly urging their ranks to think about the need to govern, after serving nearly exclusively as an opposition party for eight years under Obama.

Back at the White House, President Trump’s personal thoughts on all of this remain entirely unclear. Bob Casey lambasted the American Health Care Act Wednesday morning. Overall, Obamacare is good for low-income and middle-class Americans – those the Republican party claims to be concerned about.

States who have the Medicaid expansion would continue to get the same federal funding under ACA until the year 2020.

Lawmakers said the two sides agreed to additional restrictions on Medicaid that states would be allowed to choose.

The Republican Governor felt the expansion worked well and that it should still be allowed in the GOP bill as long as states will allow it.

Underscoring GOP leaders’ push-and-pull problem, around 60 conservatives who met with Pence proposed revisions in the other direction, including a hastening of the Medicaid expansion phaseout to 2018 instead of the legislation’s 2020.

Most states don’t yet have firm cost estimates on the consequences of the proposal by Republicans in the U.S. House.

Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., said the only change leaders might be willing to make was imposing an optional work requirement on some recipients of Medicaid, which helps finance health coverage for the poor.

About 27% of consumers were between the ages of 18 and 34, a demographic crucial to the health of Obamacare since these folks typically spend less on health care and can offset the costs of older and sicker people. This is compared to the 28 million that would not have coverage if Obamacare stayed in place. “They’re not serious about making our health-care system better”.

Conservatives were unmoved. “There’s no natural constituency for this bill”, said Republican Representative Raul Labrador, another Freedom Caucus member. That left Senate GOP leaders at least two votes shy of what they’d need to prevail in the chamber, which they control 52-48. Without most people on board, the House can not even get it to the Senate to even consider. But that could increase the cost of the legislation, and in turn, make it tougher to get through the House. “It makes no sense for Speaker Ryan and Chairman Diane Black to force GOP (Republican) lawmakers to walk the plank and vote for a bad bill that they’ve already admitted needs to be changed”, Club for Growth President David McIntosh said.

Of course, maybe it’s “never been done before” because enough politicians stood up to resist the cruel idea of tossing so many people overboard.

The House is set to vote next Thursday on the American Health Care Act.

The White House itself has focused its messaging not on the replacement bill itself, but on the “disastrous” effects of Obamacare.

“I am confident that this bill is going to come out of the Budget [Committee] tomorrow, and we will have some recommendations that we can send on forward for those concerns that our committee members have”, Black said on MSNBC.

That may seem ironic to some political watchers, given that it was just seven years ago that one of MacArthur’s political predecessors found himself in very much the same position.