He and Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows authored the amendment. “It will make coverage more expensive for older Americans as they near retirement”.
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House Republicans introduced a health care amendment Tuesday night that would allow individual states to opt out of Obamacare’s provision prohibiting insurers from charging higher rates for those with pre-existing conditions, with one catch: Members of Congress and their staff would be exempt from the higher premiums. Insurers are prohibited to deny coverage due to pre-existing medical conditions, discriminate based on gender.
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That seems unlikely, and Ryan reiterated that the House will vote when Republicans have enough support to win.
Negotiators in the House and Senate are working ahead of a Friday deadline to reach a spending deal to avoid a government shutdown and fully fund federal departments and agencies through the end of the current fiscal year in September.
The House won’t vote on Republican legislation scuttling much of President Barack Obama’s health care law until at least next week, a GOP leader said Thursday. The revised proposal is created to appeal to the more conservative base of the Republican Party.
President Donald Trump on Thursday unleashed a tweetstorm of criticism of Democrats involved in tense negotiations on a spending bill to keep the government open, accusing them of trying to close national parks and jeopardize the safety of US troops over demands to provide Americans with health care.
The changes were authored by Reps.
The development has also exacerbated already raw tensions between the conservative and moderates wings of the House.
“This is simply a matter of blame-shifting and face-saving” for a bill going nowhere, Dent said. “It will be harder for the Senate to get 51 Republicans”, Republican Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, a former House majority leader and longtime whip, said Wednesday.
In short, any concessions made to the conservatives – a.k.a. the “Freedom Caucus” – cost votes among moderates, whereas any concessions made to the moderates cost Freedom Caucus support. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, a vocal foe of the House measure, calling the changes “a significant improvement”.
Another influential conservative and Freedom Caucus member, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said the plan was “a positive”.
Republican Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y., summed it up more succinctly, speaking to reporters off the House floor.
Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Florida, told The Hill that he was still undecided, adding “I was a yes before, but there are a lot of red flags” with the new bill.
Other Republicans said the House should send the measure to the Senate to keep the effort alive.
Among them were Reps.
A spokesperson for House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi summed up the opposition, saying the bill was so unattractive, its authors wanted to exclude themselves from it.
The waivers would let states lift regulations the require insurance companies to cover essential health benefits, as long as they could prove that patients could receive coverage for such services elsewhere, such as a “high risk pool”, according to NBC News.
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The GOP’s Obamacare replacement effort (which initially failed in stunning fashion last month, when House Speaker Paul Ryan had to pull the bill because it lacked support among his own caucus) has had a dramatic week.
