Health care mess: House takes a small step

Cutting almost $1 trillion from Medicaid will give states the freedom to tailor the program to suit their needs, Price said Sunday, May 7, as he defended a narrowly passed House bill that aims to undo parts of the health care law enacted by the previous administration.

Republicans pushed their healthcare restructuring through the House on a 217-213 vote, handing President Donald Trump his first major legislative success. Some Republican senators, like Susan Collins of ME and Rob Portman of OH, have been highly critical of the bill passed by the House. To cover people with pre-existing conditions, the GOP measure would have states establish high-risk pools or reinsurance programs.

A Congressional Budget Office analysis of a previous version of the American Health Care Act - a new version of which narrowly passed the House last Thursday - predicted $880 billion would be cut from Medicaid and 14 million fewer people would enroll in the program in the next 10 years.

Last year, almost 13 million people claimed exemptions from the mandate to obtain health insurance, citing financial hardship or other reasons, and 6.5 million paid the penalty for lacking insurance (averaging $470) rather than choose a marketplace. There is no timetable for the Senate to vote on health care legislation. "The Senate is starting from scratch".

"I shouldn't say this to a great gentleman and my friend from Australia, because you have better health care than we do, but we're going to have great health care very soon", Trump told Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. The Republican from ME would have been an obvious choice seeing as how she has some expertise as a former state insurance regulator and some interest in healthcare reform. She and another senator came up with their own health care reform bill earlier this year. The House bill halts the expansion, in addition to cutting federal spending on the program.

Senator Susan Collins of ME, a moderate Republican whose vote will be critical to getting a bill to Mr Trump's desk and who voiced similar concerns, said the Senate would not take up the House bill.

The winners are wealthy Americans who will now get a tax cut because they won't have to pay to fund the Affordable Care Act, and healthy people who won't have to buy health insurance to subsidize the sick.

Under the American Health Care Act (sometimes called "Trumpcare"), insurers would still be prohibited from denying coverage based on a pre-existing condition. The measure would also water down the subsidies that help consumers afford health insurance. The House passed the American Health Care Act (AHCA) in its second iteration after altering some parts to get the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus onboard.

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White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said the White House would not dictate the process.

House Republicans passed the bill without estimates on its economic impact or projections on how many people would be booted from healthcare. Trump tweeted from his private golf course in central New Jersey.

In his Twitter comment, Trump contended, "ObamaCare premiums and deductibles are way up - it was a lie and it is dead!"

Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price also firmly defended allegations people with pre-existing conditions will suffer financially. "So much discretion is given to the states without any guardrails", she said. Collins and Ryan appeared on ABC's "This Week" and Mulvaney appeared on CBS' "Face the Nation".

Information for this article was contributed by Darlene Superville and Hope Yen of The Associated Press; by Noah Weiland of The New York Times; by Chris Strohm, Ben Brody and Mark Niquette of Bloomberg News; and by Greg Jaffe, Robert Costa, John Wagner and Amy Goldstein of The Washington Post.

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