Republicans Already Throwing Cold Water on Democrats’ Demand for Broader Health Care Agreement After Lawmakers Fold

Republicans are already throwing cold water on the idea that Democrats will get their much-desired health care reforms less than 24 hours after eight lawmakers folded and allowed President Trump’s preferred funding deal to advance. The government is expected to re-open within the next 48 hours. Democratic lawmakers began raging at their Senate colleagues on Sunday night after the Senate broke the 60-vote threshold to advance the funding bill. In total, eight Democrats voted with 52 Republicans to invoke cloture on the legislation, which will allow the chamber to pass it by a simple majority by Monday night at the earliest. The hope — according to those Senate Democrats who voted for the cloture motion — is that Republicans will come to the table to negotiate an extension of Biden-era enhanced Affordable Care Act insurance subsidies. Republicans, however, are already saying that Democrats likely will not get their wish. The chairman of the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, Senator Bill Cassidy, said on the Senate floor on Monday that the Obamacare tax credit extensions are not likely to win much support from the GOP. “We’ve gotta abandon set positions,” Dr. Cassidy, a physician, told his colleagues. “Instead of paying insurance companies to manage more of our billions, why don’t we trust the American people to manage their own resources — to manage their own care — with something which I call a pre-funded federal flexible spending account?”Dr. Cassidy went on to call the enhanced premium subsidy at the heart of Democrats’ demands a failure because it creates no incentive to actually bring down costs. “If you have the choice of giving the money to the patient for her to manage it, or giving it to the insurance company, I think we should give it to the patient,” he said. Dr. Cassidy displayed a recent Truth Social post from Mr. Trump in which he said that federal dollars now being used to subsidize insurance companies should instead be sent to taxpayers directly. “In other words, take from the BIG, BAD Insurance Companies, give it to the people, and terminate, per Dollar spent, the worst Healthcare anywhere in the World, ObamaCare,” Mr. Trump wrote Saturday. “I’m pleased to be aligned with the president,” Dr. Cassidy said Monday, standing next to a poster displaying the social media post. The HELP Committee chairman declared that Democrats’ clean extension of the enhanced subsidies would never get a vote on the floor of the House because of conservative opposition to extending the tax credits. The lead Democrat pushing for an extension of the subsidies, Senator Jeanne Shaheen — who is retiring — won a promise from Republican colleagues that her proposal would receive a vote on the Senate floor by the end of the year. The only problem is that Speaker Mike Johnson has said he will make no such promise. “I’m not promising anyone anything,” the speaker said at a press conference last week. “There’s no way. That was never possible or appropriate,” he said of a backroom deal. The chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Senator Lindsey Graham, said on the Senate floor over the weekend that there is no universe in which a Republican-controlled Congress and a Republican president go along with an extension of the subsidies. “We’re not gonna do this. We’re not gonna give in to this,” Mr. Graham said in a floor speech on Friday. On Monday, Mr. Trump himself made clear that he was in Mr. Graham’s camp for not extending the credits. He also mentioned Senator Katie Britt, another lawmaker who has said the subsidies should not be extended. “Lindsey [Graham] and I were discussing it … Katie [Britt] — we discussed it. We want a health care system where we pay the money to the people instead of the insurance companies,” Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday. “I tell you — we’re gonna be working on that very hard over the next short period of time where the people get the money.”

Republicans Already Throwing Cold Water on Democrats’ Demand for Broader Health Care Agreement After Lawmakers Fold

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