WASHINGTON (AP) – Two top Republicans announced a bill Tuesday restoring federal subsidies to insurers while including tough conditions sought by the White House. Senate Democrats have enough votes to kill it, but the measure underscores the changes the Trump administration and congressional conservatives say they want in exchange for resuming the payments.
The proposal seeks changes in President Barack Obama’s health care law that go far further than provisions in bipartisan legislation that is stuck in the Senate. That compromise has stalled as President Donald Trump has flashed contradictory signals about whether he supports it and conservatives – especially in the House – have complained it doesn’t revamp Obama’s statute strongly enough.
Tuesday’s GOP alternative – by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch of Utah and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady of Texas – highlighted the party’s internal differences over the issue.
At a lunch Tuesday with GOP senators, Trump apparently said nothing to indicate which – if either – alternative he preferred. Trump at one point told Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the Republican author of the mired bipartisan deal: “Thanks for your great work on health care. It’s good, it’s good,” according to a GOP aide who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the closed-door comments.
Like the bipartisan Senate bill, the new measure would resume the federal payments to insurers for two years. Trump has halted them, claiming they enrich insurers, but has expressed a willingness to make a deal to resume them.