The Republican-led committee is expected to unveil tax reform legislation this spring in preparation for a summer vote on the House floor.
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Members of the moderate Tuesday Group, who also pose a threat to passage of Obamacare repeal and replace, met with members of the Administration on Monday at the White House.
With hard issues such as tax reform looming, Ryan said one takeaway from the failure to find consensus among different GOP factions on health care is that, “We have to talk things out much, much, much more thoroughly”. As a compromise – and an effort to give the White House their show of progress, Ryan set in motion a plan to include one area that was agreed upon into the original bill.
A proposal discussed between the White House and leaders of the Freedom Caucus would let states seek federal waivers of two insurance requirements the law established.
Another participant – Freedom Caucus chairman Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C. – said the group would make no decisions until it reviews the language but called the session a “good meeting” in a text message. Meadows added, “There’s a whole lot of things that we have to work out”.
Three top GOP leaders each dialed back expectations for action before a two-week recess begins Thursday, after a late-night meeting of holdout factions led by Vice President Mike Pence Tuesday failed to produce a breakthrough.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy notified members of the conference that a last-minute meeting of the Rules Committee would take place Thursday to add the amendment to the American Health Care Act.
“We have come together on a new amendment”, Ryan said, that “brings us closer to the final agreement we all want to achieve”. He said talks were in “the conceptual stage”.
“I’m afraid that the Freedom Caucus continues to play Lucy with the football and keeps moving the goal posts and I believe, from what I’ve heard, they’re less than genuine in trying to get to ‘yes, ‘” Rep. Chris Collins, a NY moderate, said. Congress leaves town in days for a two-week recess, during which lawmakers could face antagonistic grilling from voters at town hall meetings and the entire GOP drive might lose momentum.
Moderate Republicans have meanwhile balked at the prospect of weakening protections for individuals with pre-existing conditions and enabling insurers to opt out of “essential health benefits” such as maternity care, mental health and substance abuse treatment and emergency services. One, known as community rating, forbids insurers from charging higher premiums on account of people’s medical problems or pre-existing conditions. Conservatives have argued that such requirements have the effect of inflating insurance costs.
When pressed on what those offers would look like, Meadows stayed quiet only stating that some of the caucus’s objectives included “making sure that preexisting issues continue to stay protected, making sure that healthcare is affordable”.
According to Needham, up to 20 members of the Freedom Caucus had been ready to support a more conservative proposal, one that would have allowed states to undo most of the mandates. “See, right now, because of the time crunch, I think we’re using the GOP plan as the backdrop and trying to modify that”. New York Times Magazine writer Robert Draper suggests that this could get chalked up to growing pains for a party that hasn’t had to govern in a decade.
A poll by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation flashed a warning for the White House, showing that 3 in 4 Americans want the Trump administration to make Obama’s law work.
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Shortly after the House GOP “repeal-and-replace” bill failed to pass the House last month, Trump said that “the best thing we can do, politically speaking, is let Obamacare explode”. “You will get guaranteed access to coverage, but you won’t be able to afford it”. They’ll also have to consider a debt ceiling increase and would like to also tackle tax reform.
