Conservatives Sound Alarm About Senate Health Bill
Source: WSJ
WASHINGTON—Conservatives inside and outside the Senate GOP are sounding alarms over the emerging shape of the chamber’s bill to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, a sign that the faction’s support may be increasingly difficult to secure.
Pressure from outside groups has intensified in recent days, and conservative lawmakers have signaled their concern that the Senate bill doesn’t do enough to curb spending on the Medicaid federal-state program for the poor or to reduce health-care premiums—two of their top goals.
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Negotiations over the bill’s contours remain fluid as Republican senators wrangle over its central tenets. No Republicans have taken a fixed position for or against the bill, in part because its language hasn’t yet been finalized. But President Donald Trump’s recent private disparagement of the bill passed by the House last month as too stingy suggests the Senate legislation is likely to only tilt more toward the chamber’s centrists.
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GOP senators have made clear their bill will pursue a slower phase-out of federal funding to the 31 states that expanded Medicaid under the ACA. To pay for some of their changes, including expenses such as beefed-up tax credits, Senate Republicans may keep or delay the repeal of some ACA taxes that would be more quickly eliminated under the House version.
GOP senators are also expected to preserve more of the ACA’s insurance regulations that conservatives want to loosen because they say that would lower costs for many consumers. For instance, the Senate bill will likely require insurers to cover people with pre-existing conditions without charging them higher premiums.
Read more: https://www.wsj.com/articles/conservatives-sound-alarm-about-senate-health-bill-1497561439
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