Conservatives Balk At GOP Plan: ‘This Is Not The Obamacare Repeal Bill We’ve Been Waiting For’

The New York Times: G.O.P. Health Bill Faces Revolt From Conservative Forces
After seven years of waiting longingly to annul President Barack Obama’s signature health care law, Republican leaders on Tuesday faced a sudden revolt from the right that threatened their proposal to remake the American health care system. The much-anticipated House plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act also drew skepticism from some of the party’s more moderate members, whose constituents have benefited from expanded coverage in recent years. (Steinhauer, 3/7)

Politico: Ryan Disappoints His Friends With Obamacare Replacement Bill
House Speaker Paul Ryan has long been the darling of conservative policy wonks. But on one of the biggest days of his political career, when House Republicans released their much-anticipated Obamacare replacement, many of Ryan's closest friends in conservative intelligentsia expressed disappointment — if not outright dismay — with the legislation bearing the speaker's imprimatur. (Johnson, 3/8)

Politico: Trump Moves To Assure Conservatives On Obamacare Replacement Plan
President Donald Trump is moving to quiet conservative opposition to the House GOP Obamacare replacement, drawing on his newfound bully pulpit to pressure but also coax rebellious lawmakers. Trump on Tuesday night turned his massive Twitter following on one of the most vocal opponents of the repeal bill: conservative firebrand Sen. Rand Paul. The Kentucky Republican had blasted Speaker Paul Ryan’s Obamacare alternative as Obamacare-lite. But Trump tweeted, “I feel sure that my friend @RandPaul will come along with the new and great health care program because he knows Obamacare is a disaster!” (Bade and Cheney, 3/7)

The Associated Press: Republican Governors Complain About GOP Health Care Plan
Republican governors complain that a GOP proposal to replace former President Barack Obama’s health care law would force millions of lower-income earners off insurance rolls or stick states with the cost of keeping them covered. Governors, especially those from political battleground states, were generally cool to the bill put forth in the Republican-controlled U.S. House. Some signaled that they would continue working on their own legislation to compete with the measure introduced Monday. (Beaumont and Noon, 3/7)

The Hill: Ryan Guarantees Health Bill Will Pass The House
Facing the start of a conservative revolt over the GOP healthcare plan, Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) vowed Tuesday that the ObamaCare replacement bill would pass the House. “We will have 218 votes,” Ryan told reporters at a Tuesday-evening news conference that capped an extraordinary day, which saw the GOP break into open warfare over the health proposal. (Wong, 3/7)

Roll Call: Democrats Won’t Make Obamacare Repeal Debates Easy
House Democrats are gearing up to make Wednesday’s dueling health care committee debates as painful as possible for Republicans. The minority members on two committees, Ways and Means and Energy and Commerce, will march to the concurrent markups of the new Republican plan to overhaul the 2010 health care law armed with dozens of politically tough amendments, staffers and outside groups told CQ Roll Call. (Mershon and Williams, 3/7)

In other news on the Republicans' health care plan —

The New York Times: Millions Risk Losing Health Insurance In Republican Plan, Analysts Say
Millions of people who get private health coverage through the Affordable Care Act would be at risk of losing it under the replacement legislation proposed by House Republicans, analysts said Tuesday, with Americans in their 50s and 60s especially likely to find coverage unaffordable. Starting in 2020, the plan would do away with the current system of providing premium subsidies based on people’s income and the cost of insurance where they live. Instead, it would provide tax credits of $2,000 to $4,000 per year based on their age. (Goodnough and Abelson, 3/7)

The Washington Post: Income Separates The Winners And Losers In Republicans’ Health-Care Plans
The architecture of the tax credits in the legislation, which House committees are to begin debating Wednesday morning, would offer less help to lower-income Americans than the subsidies provided by the current law. It would steer more money to young adults at the expense of older ones. And it would most benefit consumers living in states in which insurance prices already are relatively low. (Goldstein and Eilperin, 3/7)

The Washington Post: Republicans’ Obamacare Replacement Contains Huge Tax Cuts For Insurance Companies, But It Comes At A Cost.
The bill would repeal a slew of taxes that would have cost insurance, medical device makers and other health care companies tens of billions of dollars over a decade. The repeal of just one such provision — the health insurer tax — is a tax cut of $145 billion over a decade, according to an analysis by the Joint Committee on Taxation. (Johnson, 3/7)

The Wall Street Journal: House Health Plan Explained: How The Tax Credit Would Work
House Republicans’ plan to repeal and replace parts of the 2010 Affordable Care Act would seek to help households purchase health insurance with a measure called an advanceable refundable tax credit. Here’s an explanation of how that would work, and how it differs from the existing law. (Rubin, 3/8)

Bloomberg: Obamacare Bill's Burden On Poor Brings Out Critics On All Sides
The effects of the long-promised measure to roll back Barack Obama’s signature 2010 legislation would fall mainly on the poor, a fact that has set off opposition from both left and the right. The bill would cut taxes to the tune of about $575 billion over a decade, mainly on the wealthy and health-insurance companies. It would limit money channeled to low-income people, raise costs for older Americans and wind down the expansion of Medicaid. (Trace and Edney, 3/7)

The Wall Street Journal: Apple’s IPhone Makes (Another) Cameo In The Health-Care Debate
Some Republicans are arguing the rollback of Obamacare would put responsibility on Americans to make better choices as consumers, but one comment this morning didn’t get a great reception. House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R., Utah) told CNN Tuesday that lower-income Americans may have to prioritize spending money on health-care rather than electronic gadgets such as iPhones. (Peterson and Andrews, 3/7)

The Wall Street Journal: Health-Care Companies Find Some Gifts, Big Risks In Plan To Replace Obamacare
For health-care companies, the new House Republican proposal to replace the Affordable Care Act carries significant risks, as it would likely mean a decline in insured patients and continued worries about an unstable market. Insurers, hospitals and medical-device manufacturers are still parsing the details of the draft legislation, which could change considerably as it moves through the House and Senate, and they are applauding moves like the elimination of some taxes. But the proposal’s pullbacks on Medicaid and federal insurance subsidies could significantly reduce the number of people with health coverage over time, analysts and industry officials said, a serious problem for health-care providers and insurers. (Wilde Mathews and Evans, 3/7)

Stat: Hospitals Could Bear The Financial Brunt Of The American Health Care Act
Hospitals could face a huge financial hit from the Medicaid overhaul as they grapple with lost payments and reduced volume. Republicans would freeze the expansion in 2020 (11 million people have gained Medicaid coverage under Obamacare) and impose block grants, or per capita limits in state funding, by 2020...The GOP replacement could also expose hospitals to greater financial risk from patients who buy insurance in the individual insurance market. The proposal would replace the current subsidy program by 2020 with age-based tax credits. Robert Huckman, a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, said the change would broaden financial assistance across the income scale, but provide less assistance per person than Obamacare to the people most in need. (Ross, 3/7)

Stat: 'Can I Keep My Doctor?' The GOP's Turn To Answer The Question
Leaked older drafts of the GOP plan would have capped tax benefits for employer-based health insurance. If Republicans had made that change, putting the squeeze on employer coverage sooner or later, a half dozen experts told STAT that employer plans would likely start moving toward narrower health care provider networks to keep their costs down and stay under the cap. In other words, it would have extended the so-called “keep your doctor” problem to the much bigger employer market, which covers half of all Americans. The fallout could have been huge. (Scott, 3/8)