Alice Ollstein contributed reporting.
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) is not in the mood to negotiate the Obamacare repeal bill – and he doesn’t want you to get the idea that the vice president is either.
Ryan pushed back at the idea that Vice President Mike Pence had told conservative hardliners that the Obamacare repeal bill unveiled this week was open to negotiations, arguing that what Pence meant is that Republicans are at the beginning of a process that will also include administrative changes to the law and separate health care reform bills down the road.
“It’s not that this is open for negotiations,” Ryan said Tuesday at a press conference to tout the legislation, the American Health Care Act. Pence had met with Republicans on both sides of the chamber Tuesday, including the House hardliners resisting the bill.
“What Mike is trying to describe is we envision three phases,” Ryan said, referring to a process that will start with the American Health Care Act, incorporate regulatory changes made by Health and Humans Secretary Tom Price and eventually include standalone health care bills that will need Democratic support.
The legislation in question will be marked up Wednesday morning, a mere 41 hours or so after it was released. But it appears that the conservatives, led by House Freedom Caucus Chair Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) are taking Pence’s comments to them to mean a more intensive negotiation process.
.@RepMarkMeadows says VEEP Pence just assures him and HFC that the obamacare repeal bill was open for negotiation.
— Rachael Bade (@rachaelmbade) March 7, 2017
The conservatives held a press conference Tuesday afternoon, where they painted the comments made by Trump administration officials as descriptions of a bargaining position from which they could seek concessions.
“It was instructive that [White House Press Secretary] Sean Spicer said repeatedly that the health care bill that was introduced is a work in progress. Secretary Price said the same thing at the beginning of the press conference,” Rep. Mark Sanford (R-SC), a Freedom Caucus member who has introduced his own Obamacare replacement bill, said. “So if we liken this to Donald Trump’s world of ‘everything is a negotiation,’ this is an opening bid. What conservatives are saying is, might not we constructively refine what’s been introduced?”
Conservatives object to bill’s tax credits, which they have labeled as a new entitlement program, as well as to a continuous coverage requirement that they equate to the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate and to its continuation of the Medicaid expansion for some years.
Ryan expressed confidence that he would get his caucus in line to provide the 218 votes necessary to pass the bill out of the House.
“We actually ran on a repeal and replace plan. That’s what this is,” Ryan said.
