Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Law. President Trump and House Republicans
Speaker 1: held a celebratory press conference yesterday after the House passed
Speaker 1: a sweeping health insurance bill, but the road to ultimate
Speaker 1: passage of a Republican health insurance law maybe a long one.
Speaker 1: Some Senate Republicans have concerns about various provisions of the
Speaker 1: House bills, such as its changes to Medicaid, and almost immediately,
Speaker 1: Senate Republicans said that rather than take up the House bill,
Speaker 1: the Senate would write its own health care bill. Here
Speaker 1: with us to talk about what's likely to happen as
Speaker 1: they Senate considers health insurance are Laura Littvan and Stephen
Speaker 1: Dennis Bloomberg News congressional reporters. Laura, what are senators saying
Speaker 1: about what happens next? They're saying they're going to take
Speaker 1: their time and they want to really closely examine the
Speaker 1: provisions of the House bill, and that they want to
Speaker 1: go their own road. They want to carefully consider some
Speaker 1: of the objections that members have. They are divided within
Speaker 1: their party. You have moderates who are concerned about the
Speaker 1: effective of people on people of pre existing who have
Speaker 1: pre existing conditions. Uh, Some members are concerned about eight
Speaker 1: hundred billion in Medicaid cuts over ten years UM. Others
Speaker 1: are concerned about the size of tax cuts. Those are
Speaker 1: on the moderate wing and on the conservative wing you
Speaker 1: have some like Grand Paul who would really like to
Speaker 1: simply repeal Obamacare. So there's a big divide. And or
Speaker 1: In Hatch has said that he wants to craft a
Speaker 1: measure that can get fifty one votes. He really only
Speaker 1: needs fifty votes. So Stephen, is it possible, as you
Speaker 1: look at the Senate to get fifty votes? Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: ultimately they can lose to Senate Republicans. They're not gonna
Speaker 1: get any Democrats for this. As long as those tax
Speaker 1: cuts in there, it's going to be radioactive for Democrats.
Speaker 1: And as long as there's a bill that's gonna have
Speaker 1: millions of people lose health insurance. And you know the
Speaker 1: House bill, Uh, we don't have the final CBO score yet,
Speaker 1: but the original version said it would result in twenty
Speaker 1: four million people fewer people having health insurance in ten years.
Speaker 1: That's a tough pill to swallow for a lot of
Speaker 1: these moderates, And if you look at the individual impact
Speaker 1: in each state, that's something that's going to really gonna
Speaker 1: come into play if you look at like Alaska. Lisa Murkowski,
Speaker 1: who told me yesterday in an interview that she wants
Speaker 1: to start with a clean slate. That House bill has
Speaker 1: big problems for Alaska because it's a high cost state. Currently,
Speaker 1: people on the insurance markets who get subsidies have huge
Speaker 1: subsidies because the costs are so high. Well, those huge
Speaker 1: subsidies get turned into a two thousand dollar to four
Speaker 1: thousand dollar flat tax credit under the House bill, and
Speaker 1: so suddenly people could see a forty dollar jump in premiums.
Speaker 1: That's not cool for Lisa Murkowski. She's not gonna vote
Speaker 1: for that. They're gonna need to have to change the
Speaker 1: bill to have more help, especially for seniors who could
Speaker 1: get really skyrocketing premiums. If you're ages fifty to sixty
Speaker 1: four and you make about twenty five dollars a year,
Speaker 1: CBO said, the House bill could see s seven d
Speaker 1: increase in your premiums. That's not affordable. That's one of
Speaker 1: the features of the House bill though, because if you
Speaker 1: want to get premiums down for everybody else, you have
Speaker 1: to charge older people more, or you have to charge
Speaker 1: people with pre existing conditions more or you need to
Speaker 1: get rid of some of the benefits in the Affordable
Speaker 1: Care Act, things like maternity coverage, prescription drug coverage, and
Speaker 1: the like, and that all that stuff is gonna be
Speaker 1: very emotional, very tough to get people on board. There's
Speaker 1: a working group with thirteen men on it right now,
Speaker 1: Senate Republican men who have been meeting uh the last
Speaker 1: several weeks to try and come up with their own bill.
Speaker 1: But the real moderates um that they need to get
Speaker 1: on board, which includes Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. He's a
Speaker 1: doctor who served in a charity hospital for a couple
Speaker 1: of decades, Susan Collins of Maine, and Murkowski. Without those
Speaker 1: three moderates, you cannot pass a bill in the Senate.
Speaker 1: So ultimate they're gonna have to make at least a
Speaker 1: couple of those moderates happy to get to that ultimate
Speaker 1: fifty votes plus Mike Pennce casting the tie breaking vote,
Speaker 1: and that might take many, many weeks. The original plan
Speaker 1: a couple of months ago, when they wanted to have
Speaker 1: this Lightning Strike bill passed within weeks of Donald Trump
Speaker 1: taking office. The original plan was the Senate would pass
Speaker 1: the bill the week after the House that's not no
Speaker 1: longer operative, and part of it is a rebranding exercise.
Speaker 1: I think the House bill has become so toxic politically.
Speaker 1: It's it's poll numbers are terrible, and the Senate thinks, okay, well,
Speaker 1: even if we're gonna keep a lot of the same
Speaker 1: elements we wanted to call it the Senate Bill, it'll
Speaker 1: it'll pull better that way than than have a House
Speaker 1: bill that's been so tainted by that CBO score and
Speaker 1: by month after month of very difficult coverage and a
Speaker 1: lot of messy and loud town halls. And so I
Speaker 1: do think that the sentence is probably gonna take a
Speaker 1: little bit more time. But they don't have that much
Speaker 1: time because a lot of the insurance companies are trying
Speaker 1: to put together their plans for next year, and in
Speaker 1: May and June is when they make those decisions on
Speaker 1: what the rates are going to be, whether or not
Speaker 1: they're going to be in a state or not. And
Speaker 1: Lamar Alexandrew's the Health chairman, has Uh is facing the
Speaker 1: very real prospect that there will be no plans at
Speaker 1: all in his state. So he has a sense of
Speaker 1: urgency to get something done in the next few weeks.
Speaker 1: But like I said, it's not gonna be easy. Laura,
Speaker 1: we have about forty five seconds here. But is the
Speaker 1: you know, they they're basing their what they're gonna do
Speaker 1: on the idea that they don't need the Democrats. They
Speaker 1: can't be feel abustard. Is there anything in the law
Speaker 1: it's going to prevent them from doing this? Through what's
Speaker 1: called the reconciliation process, they could be prevented from moving
Speaker 1: some very important aspects of it through, and that includes
Speaker 1: the changes that were made in the House to try
Speaker 1: to get it through to get more palatable to conservatives
Speaker 1: that would let states opt out of the pre existing
Speaker 1: condition aspects of the Affordable Care Act and possibly impose
Speaker 1: high allow people who have pre existing conditions to see
Speaker 1: higher premiums if the state offers a high risk pool.
Speaker 1: That's a very important part of getting it back through
Speaker 1: the House potentially, and that may not be able to
Speaker 1: go through the Senate with just fifty one votes. Well,
Speaker 1: our thanks to Bloomberg News reporters Laura Lidvan and Stephen
Speaker 1: Dennis for being with us today to talk about what's
Speaker 1: going to happen in the Senate on health insurance after
Speaker 1: the House has passed its bill. Yesterday, coming up on
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Law, President Trump signed a religious freedom executive Order,
Speaker 1: but a lot of people are saying that it doesn't
Speaker 1: really accomplish very much. We'll be talking about that, and
Speaker 1: also the Eagles are suing the Hotel California. That's coming
Speaker 1: up on Bloomberg Law on Bloomberg Radio. This is Bloomberg