Trump Threatens Subsidies, Lawmakers’ Own Insurance If They Don’t Pass A Health Bill
President Donald Trump, following the defeat of the GOP health proposal, says Republicans looked "like fools" and should not give up on passing legislation.
The New York Times:
Trump Tells G.O.P. Senators Not To Be ‘Total Quitters’ On Health Bill
President Trump on Saturday scolded Congress for looking “like fools” and urged Republican senators not to be “total quitters” as he insisted that his push to overhaul the nation’s health care law remained viable, the day after it was rejected by the Senate. To reinforce his demand, the president threatened to cut lawmakers’ own health insurance plans if Congress failed to revive the flagging seven-year effort to roll back the medical care program of former President Barack Obama. (Haberman, 7/29)
The Wall Street Journal:
Donald Trump Threatens To Cancel Some Health-Care Benefits For Lawmakers
For months, Mr. Trump has threatened to stop reimbursements to insurance companies—a part of the ACA—but his administration has always paid them in the end, including amid significant uncertainty in June and at a crucial moment in GOP negotiations just a week ago in July. The next set of payments, which total millions of dollars for insurers that have lowered deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs for the poorest enrollees in coverage under the law also known as Obamacare, is due in three weeks. (Radnosfky, 7/29)
Los Angeles Times:
Obamacare 101: Trump Threatens To Let Obamacare Fail. Can He?
President Trump has said he wants to “let Obamacare implode” as a way to force Democrats to negotiate a deal over replacing the Affordable Care Act. How real is that threat, and how imminent? Here are some key questions and answers. (Lauter and Levey, 7/28)
The Wall Street Journal:
Key Issue In Health-Care Battle: Insurance Subsidies
As health insurers weigh their commitments to the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges for 2018, they point to a key issue that will affect the rates they would charge and indeed whether they will participate at all: Federal subsidies known as cost-sharing reduction payments. Those payments are likely to be a major focus as the industry pushes Congress to pass legislation aimed at stabilizing the exchanges. (Mathews, 7/28)
Politico:
Lawsuits Could Force Feds To Pay Obamacare Insurers
A pending court decision could force the Trump administration to pump billions of dollars into Obamacare insurers, even as the president threatens to let the health care law “implode.” Health insurers have filed nearly two dozen lawsuits claiming the government owes them payments from a program meant to blunt their losses in the Obamacare marketplaces. That raises the prospect that the Trump administration will have to bankroll a program the GOP has pilloried as an insurer bailout. (Demko, 7/30)
Reuters:
U.S. Health Secretary Says His Job Is To Follow Obamacare Law
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price said on Sunday that it was his department's job to follow the law on the Affordable Care Act, former President Obama's signature domestic initiative known as Obamacare. (Cornwell, 7/30)
Politico:
Centrist Lawmakers Plot Bipartisan Health Care Stabilization Bill
A coalition of roughly 40 House Republicans and Democrats plan to unveil a slate of Obamacare fixes Monday they hope will gain traction after the Senate’s effort to repeal the law imploded. The Problem Solvers caucus, led by Tom Reed (R-N.Y.) and Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), is fronting the effort to stabilize the ACA markets, according to multiple sources. But other centrist members, including Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.), and several other lawmakers from the New Democrat Coalition and the GOP’s moderate Tuesday Group are also involved. (Caygle and Demko, 7/30)
The Washington Post:
What’s Next For The Affordable Care Act Now That Repeal Has Failed?
The Affordable Care Act has reshaped the nation’s health-care landscape in a way the country has not seen since the passage of Great Society programs in the 1960s. For more than seven years, it has been the foundation for a slew of new regulations and a massive redistribution of funds within the medical system. And it has changed what Americans expect of their government — which is why Republicans, despite having used the ACA as a political rallying cry for seven years, have encountered such difficulty in peeling it back. (Eilperin, 7/28)
The New York Times:
How To Repair The Health Law (It’s Tricky But Not Impossible)
Republicans have failed to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Now, can it be repaired? The seven-year-old law has survived Supreme Court decisions and aggressive attempts to extinguish it by Republicans in Congress and the White House. But even people who rely on its coverage agree that it still has big problems. The question for the roughly 20 million Americans who buy their own health coverage — and for millions of others who remain uninsured — is what can realistically be done to address their main concerns: high prices and lack of choice in many parts of the country. (Abelson, Goodnough and Thomas, 7/29)
The New York Times:
Behind Legislative Collapse: An Angry Vow Fizzles For Lack Of A Viable Plan
The closing argument was a curious one: Vote yes, Republican leaders told the holdouts in their conference. We promise it will never become law. After seven years of railing against the evils of the Affordable Care Act, the party had winnowed its hopes of dismantling it down to a menu of options to appease recalcitrant lawmakers — with no more pretenses of lofty policy making, only a realpolitik plea to keep the legislation churning through the Capitol by voting to advance something, anything. They ended up with nothing. (Flegenheimer, Martin and Steinhauer, 7/28)
The New York Times:
How Schumer Held Democrats Together Through A Health Care Maelstrom
Over the past week, as Senate Republicans feverishly cobbled together their doomed health care bill, Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, made several quiet visits to the private “hideaway” office of John McCain, Republican of Arizona, near the Senate chamber on the Capitol’s first floor. Senator McCain, who recently received a brain cancer diagnosis, was nervous about the bill, which he thought would harm people in his state, and elegiac about members of his storied family, reminiscing about them at some length. (Steinhauer, 7/29)
Los Angeles Times:
GOP Confronts An Inconvenient Truth: Americans Want A Healthcare Safety Net
The dramatic collapse of Senate legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act may not end the Republican dream of rolling back the 2010 healthcare law. But it lay bare a reality that will impede any GOP effort to sustain the repeal campaign: Americans, though ambivalent about Obamacare in general, don’t want to give up the law’s landmark health protections. (Levey, 7/28)