Congress must hurry up and repeal Obamacare this spring to avoid the wrath of voters who expected Republicans to ease the anxiety about soaring rates and dwindling insurance options in their home states, conservative lawmakers said Wednesday.
Replacing the Affordable Care Act’s heavy mandates with free market reforms is crucial, they said, but it can wait. What can’t wait is a flat repeal, which the conservatives said needs to happen “within the next two or three months.”
“I think repeal becomes a lot more difficult if you load it down with all the heavy details involving what comes next, where we don’t have a whole lot of consensus,” Sen. Mike Lee, Utah Republican, said at a roundtable meeting hosted by the conservative Heritage Foundation.
He is at odds with Republican leaders, who have said they want to have a replacement in hand when they repeal the 2010 law. They say insurance markets need the certainty of knowing what comes next.
President Trump recently told Fox News that the repeal-and-replace effort might stretch into next year, though House leaders said he was referring to implementation of the new policy. They said they are still aiming for a vote this year.
Party leaders are behind their own self-imposed schedule, however.
Key committees were to have their plans ready by Jan. 27 so both chambers could take up fast-track repeal legislation that avoids a Democratic filibuster.
Conservatives are growing impatient, saying they promised in election campaigns last year that they would quickly repeal the law.
“The biggest problem with waiting is that’s not what we told the voters,” said Rep. Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican.
Rep. Mark Meadows, North Carolina Republican, said the fastest way to rectify the market is to repeal Obamacare, citing a lack of choices in his state.
“There is one carrier in my district now,” he said.
Congress approved a repeal in late 2015 only to have it vetoed by President Obama. That bill immediately repealed the “individual mandate” tax penalty for failing to have insurance, then took two years to cut off taxpayer subsidies that help people buy private plans and nix the expansion of Medicaid in selected states.
“I think it would be a huge mistake to ratchet that back down. The chaos American people are facing right now is related to a set of circumstances put in place by Obamacare. That’s what has created the chaos,” Mr. Lee said. “I wish there were a nonchaotic path [forward], one that were easy.”
Democrats have urged Republicans to fix Obamacare by expanding it, offering more generous subsidies to entice more customers and adding a government-run “public option” to compete with private plans.
Republicans rejected that, saying the solution to a failing Obamacare law isn’t more Obamacare. Still, Republicans are struggling to coalesce around a replacement plan.
One sticking point is how to cover customers who are already sick, while scrapping the Obamacare mandate that required healthier people to enroll in coverage, too, to try to balance out insurers’ costs.
In general, Republicans say insurers should have to accept people with pre-existing medical conditions as long as those customers have maintained coverage of some form. That way, insurers won’t be saddled with consumers who, rather than paying premiums over time, wait until they get sick to sign up and submit costly claims.
Republicans also say customers who are priced out of the market could be covered by “high-risk pools,” although the federal government or states would have to fund them. The House Republicans’ “Better Way” plan called for $25 billion in federal funding over 10 years.
“I have not heard any of my colleagues say we should leave those with pre-existing conditions out in the cold,” Mr. Meadows said.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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