WASHINGTON — President Trump wants Congress to move quickly this week to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, but congressional Republicans are far from a consensus on a repeal-and-replace effort that won’t leave millions of their constituents without insurance.
Monday, two senators who have cautioned colleagues to delay repeal until they’ve settled on a replacement will announce an alternative plan to give states the choice to keep the health care law or be granted flexibility to expand Medicaid and other coverage options.
That alternative, from Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Bill Cassidy, R-La, runs counter to the plans on the table, including one from Trump’s health secretary nominee Tom Price, known as the “Empowering Patients First Act.” That would offer tax credits, encourage the use of health savings accounts and urge states to develop high-risk pools.
“I’m not saying that it’s perfect, but it’s important that we put specific proposals on the table,” Collins said on the Senate floor about the plan she will advance this week. Repeal without replacement or repeal with a delay, as some lawmakers have suggested, would send insurance markets into a tailspin, she said.
In addition to Price’s plan, Republicans have considered House Speaker Paul Ryan’s “A Better Way.” Ryan’s plan would also offer tax credits to help people pay for insurance, and he wants to overhaul Medicare, which Trump has promised not to cut.
Complicating the situation, Trump’s pledge for “insurance for everybody” conflicts with what many fiscal-minded Republicans intend to do – and the yawning gap between congressional conservatives and their president on the issue is something Democrats are eager to exploit.
“I guess we have to wait for President Trump’s Twitter to figure out what the Republican plan is going to be,” said Rep. Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M. He is a member of Democratic leadership, which has sought to highlight Republican contortions over finding a solution. “They’re all on different pages and when they try to clean it up they contradict each other all over again,” Lujan said.
Although the new Trump White House website does not list health care as one of the administration’s “top issues,” and it didn’t come up in his inaugural address, Trump addressed repeal in one of his first acts as president. He signed an executive order Friday that reiterates his administration’s intent to seek “the prompt repeal” of the 2010 law that has extended health care to 20 million Americans. But the executive order itself notes that regulations can be changed only through the traditional process of “notice and comment,” which can take months or even years.
And it will require his political appointees to be in office, which has yet to happen, particularly as Senate Democrats look to slow the nomination of Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., Trump’s choice for health and human services secretary. Price goes before the Senate Finance Committee Tuesday for a confirmation hearing.
Trump has said his administration has a health care plan “very much formulated down to the final strokes.” But his promise a week ago of “insurance for everybody” has Republicans with an eye on fiscal restraint worried that he’s promising more than they can deliver. Vice President Mike Pence sought last week to clarify Trump’s words, telling CNN that Trump is talking about “making insurance affordable for everyone.”
Price also distanced himself from Trump’s pledge. He said at a Senate hearing that he was committed to seeing that Americans have “access” to health care coverage, which Democrats point out is not the same thing as guaranteeing coverage.
Trump’s most recent pledge would suggest “a much more expansive plan than he even talked about on the campaign trail or than any of the proposals coming from Congress,” said Larry Levitt, senior vice president for special initiatives at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “We’re in a period of very little clarity.”
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