Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Monday stated Home Majority Chief Steve Scalise (R-La.) is working with the chairs of three Home committees to compile a Republican well being care plan as the federal government shutdown nears the one-month mark and Democrats demand motion on expiring ObamaCare subsidies.
“Republicans have been working on a fix for health care, we’ve been doing this for years,” Johnson stated in a press convention on Monday when requested in regards to the coming “health care cliff.”
He held up a duplicate of a coverage framework developed when he was chair of the Republican Research Committee from 2019 to 2020, asserting that “these ideas have been on paper for a long time.”
The heads of these Home committees of jurisdiction concerned within the well being care plans can be Methods and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.), Vitality and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), and Training and Workforce Chair Tim Walberg (R-Mich.).
Republicans have come below intense stress from Democrats on the problem of well being care, and there have been indicators that some within the GOP see it as a vulnerability forward of subsequent 12 months’s midterms. Enhanced subsidies below the Inexpensive Care Act (ACA) are set to run out on the finish of the 12 months, and tens of millions of People are receiving notifications within the mail about sharply rising premiums.
Distinguished GOP lawmakers, together with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) and Sen. Josh Hawley (Mo.), have sounded the alarm in regards to the results of rising insurance coverage charges, which come after Republicans handed funding cuts to Medicaid as a part of their tax and spending reconciliation invoice.
Republicans, nonetheless, say they won’t negotiate on the ACA subsidies till Democrats vote to reopen the federal government — they usually have by no means voted for the expiring subsidy enhancements signed into legislation below former President Biden.
Johnson has stated that the subsidy expiration was all the time going to be one thing that lawmakers negotiate earlier than the tip of the 12 months, however he voiced his opposition to these expiring subsidies.
“The expiring ObamaCare subsidy at the end of the year is a serious problem,” Johnson stated. “If you look at it objectively, you know that it is subsidizing bad policy. We’re throwing good money at a bad, broken system, and so it needs real reforms.”
Johnson stated it isn’t acceptable to deal with the well being care subsidies on a easy stopgap authorities funding measure “because it’s very complicated to fix.”
“But Republicans have a long list of ideas. Leader Scalise has been working with the chairmen of our three committees of jurisdiction — putting all of that, formulating all that, grabbing the best ideas that we’ve had for years, to put it on paper and make it work,” Johnson stated.
“But we know we’re going to have to arm wrestle with Democrats. Why? Because many of them are avowed to get us to a single-payer system,” Johnson stated. “They do love socialism, my friends.”
Republicans in current days have introduced up concepts like increasing well being financial savings accounts, they usually flaunted a provision within the Home model of the tax-and-spending megabill on cost-sharing discount reimbursements to personal well being plans, nevertheless it was stripped from the ultimate model within the Senate.
