Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
'We’re Firing With Real Bullets Now': GOP Faces Similar Obstacles As In 2014, But Stakes Are Higher
Bloomberg: Republicans' Struggles To Replace Obamacare Feel Like Deja Vu All Over Again
Republicans in Congress are hitting roadblocks as they try to devise a plan to replace Obamacare, stuck over issues like how to structure tax breaks they want to give people to buy insurance. The party stalemated on many of the same obstacles in 2014 during its most extensive effort to devise an alternative, according to lawmakers and aides involved with that effort. "It wasn’t easy for us," said Eric Cantor, then the House majority leader, who led the effort. "There were a lot of thorny issues. The easy way was to gloss over the thorny details and the intra-party divisions." (Kapur, 2/13)
Politico: Conservatives Balking At GOP Leadership's Obamacare Plans
House conservatives — anxious that the GOP’s effort to end Obamacare is getting bogged down in the fight over what a replacement should look like — are plotting a major push to repeal the law immediately without simultaneously approving an alternative. The House Freedom Caucus and a number of Republican Study Committee members this week will urge Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and his lieutenants to forego their plan to add replacement provisions to a repeal bill, dubbed “repeal-plus.” Instead, they want to approve the same standalone repeal bill that Congress sent to President Barack Obama in 2016. (Bade, 2/13)
The Hill: Freedom Caucus Vows To Oppose Weakening ObamaCare Repeal
The conservative House Freedom Caucus voted Monday night to oppose an ObamaCare repeal bill if it does not go as far as the repeal measure that passed in 2015, drawing a line in the sand that could complicate Republican repeal efforts. Conservatives have been pushing for the 2015 repeal bill, which kills the core elements of the law including its subsidies, taxes, mandates and Medicaid expansion, to be brought up again. But the move Monday night to oppose an effort if it falls short of that bill is a significant new development. (Sullivan, 2/13)
And in other news on the efforts to dismantle the health law —
The Hill: GOP Group Targets 50 House Members On ObamaCare
A political group aligned with House GOP leadership is launching a yearlong ad campaign targeting 50 House members to support repealing and replacing ObamaCare. American Action Network (AAN) will concentrate on 50 members from both sides of the aisle ahead of the 2018 midterm elections. AAN will use digital ads that appear when constituents in these districts type in keywords — including the lawmaker’s name — into the search engines Google and Bing. (Hagen, 2/13)
Politico Pro: Obamacare Repeal Delays Threaten Tax-Reform Reconciliation Plans
Delays in repealing the Affordable Care Act are complicating Republican plans to muscle tax reform through Congress. Republicans want to pass two budgets this year so they can twice tap budget reconciliation — once to push an Obamacare replacement through the Senate on a party-line vote, and a second time to do the same for a tax-code rewrite. (Faler, 2/13)
Kaiser Health News: A Deep Dive Into 4 GOP Talking Points On Health Care
Republicans leaders have a lengthy list of talking points about the shortcomings of the health law. Shortly before his inauguration last month, President Donald Trump said that it “is a complete and total disaster. It’s imploding as we sit.” And they can point to a host of issues, including premium increases averaging more than 20 percent this year, a drop in the number of insurers competing on the Affordable Care Act marketplaces and rising consumer discontent with high deductibles and limited doctor networks. Yet a careful analysis of some of the GOP’s talking points show a much more nuanced situation and suggest that the political fights over the law may have contributed to some of its problems. (Rovner, 2/14)
