WASHINGTON — Republican, Democratic, and even bipartisan plans for reshaping parts of the Obama health care law are proliferating in Congress. But they have iffy prospects at best, and there were no signs Monday that GOP leaders have chosen a fresh pathway after last week’s collapse of their struggle to repeal and rewrite the statute.
Despite a weekend of tweets from President Trump insisting that the Senate revisit the issue, Republican prospects for garnering 50 votes to push something through the chamber seemed to worsen after Senator John McCain returned to Arizona for brain cancer treatments.
He was among three GOP senators who joined Democrats in opposing a bare-bones bill rolling back a few pieces of President Barack Obama’s statute, dealing it a 51-49 defeat, and his absence probably denies leaders their best chance of turning that vote around.
In the House, 43 Democratic and Republican moderates proposed a plan that includes continuing federal payments that help insurers contain expenses for lower-earning customers and limiting Obama’s requirement that larger employers offer coverage to workers.
Trump has threatened anew in recent days to cut off the payments to insurers, which total $7 billion this year and are helping trim out-of-pocket costs for 7 million people.
Hoping to find some way forward, health secretary Tom Price was meeting with some governors and at least one senator, Louisiana Republican Bill Cassidy, congressional and state house aides said. Among those attending was Republican Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, who’s been trying to defend his state’s expansion of Medicaid, the health insurance program for poor people, against proposed GOP cuts.
Cassidy and Republican Senators Lindsey Grahamof South Carolina and Dean Heller of Nevada have proposed converting the $110 billion they estimate Obama’s law spends yearly for health insurance into grants states could use for health programs as they see fit.
Besides continuing federal payments to insurers, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, has pushed two other Democratic proposals.
Under one by Senators Tim Kaine of Virginia and Tom Carper of Delaware, the federal government would help pay larger-than-expected claims for insurers providing coverage on the federal and state online marketplaces established by Obama’s law.
Another by Senator Clare McCaskill of Missouri would let people in counties where no insurers offer policies on exchanges buy the same coverage that members of Congress purchase. The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services estimated last week that exchanges would offer no coverage next year in 40 of the country’s roughly 3,000 counties.
