GOP ready for new health bill
WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says he’s ready to unwrap his latest bill repealing much of President Barack Obama’s health care law. Another top Republican says the measure will likely keep a pair of tax hikes on wealthier Americans that Obama’s statute imposed to help finance its expanded coverage.
McConnell, R-Ky., said he will introduce his party’s altered health care bill Thursday and begin trying to muscle it through the Senate next week. The renewed effort comes two weeks after he abandoned his initial plan due to deep divisions within the GOP.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, his party’s No. 2 Senate leader, said Tuesday that the new bill will probably preserve Obama’s 3.8 percent tax increase on investment income for couples earning over $250,000 annually. It would also likely retain a payroll tax increase of 0.9 percent on the same earners that helps finance Medicare, he said.
The two levies are among the biggest Obama’s 2010 statute imposed, raising an estimated $231 billion over the coming decade. Perhaps around $50 billion of that would be used to increase a $100 billion fund already in the GOP bill for states to help insurers contain consumers’ premiums and deductibles, Cornyn said.
Republicans generally oppose tax boosts, and it was unclear whether preserving those tax increases would threaten support by any conservatives for the health bill. But Republicans are hoping that keeping the two Obama levies might help blunt Democratic attacks that the GOP package would help the rich and hurt the poor.
“We’re trying to take at least one sharp stick off the table,” Cornyn said.
He also said the reworked bill will provide $45 billion over a decade to help states combat abuse of drugs including opioids, and make it easier for states to get federal waivers to decide how to spend money under their Medicaid health programs for the poor and elderly.
