House Speaker Paul Ryan is planning on jamming through his top-secret Obamacare repeal proposal this week, apparently trying to cram it through before internal opposition to it can get any stronger. Leadership supposedly finalized the legislation over the weekend, the Los Angeles Times reports. Vice President Mike Pence and Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price traveled to Wisconsin over the weekend to meet with Ryan and provide a united front. "We're putting the finishing touches on our plan," said Pence.
And House Ways and Means Committee chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas), whose committee could hold a hearing on proposed legislation as soon as this week, said he’s confident the president is behind the House plan. “There was no mistaking he is exactly on the same page as House Republicans,” Brady said.
What was missing in all this was anyone from the the Senate. On Sunday, Maine Sen. Susan Collins appeared on CBS's Face the Nation and said from the Senate perspective, there "is not a consensus at this point." Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul (who grabbed as much attention as he possibly could last week by searching for and railing against Ryan's secret plan) remains resolutely opposed to anything except complete repeal and the system of tax credits Ryan has been pushing. "They’re going to have a new tax, a new government subsidy program and a new [insurance] mandate," says Paul. On the other hand, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio wants partial repeal, saying that what Republicans can't push for is "going back to 2009, because that system had problems as well."
Then there are the maniacs in the House.
“If the replacement plan is Obamacare Lite, it’s not going to pass,” warned Representative Raúl Labrador, a member of the hardline House Freedom Caucus. The conservative group has raised concerns about a cornerstone of the emerging plan: the use of refundable tax credits to subsidize the purchase of health insurance for people who don’t get coverage through their employer. The policy, critics on the right say, is too similar to the tax subsidies already in the Affordable Care Act.
Meanwhile, the legislation remains under lock and key. It's supposedly going to a hearing in the House Ways and Means Committee as soon as this week, but still hasn't been submitted to the Congressional Budget Office, and there were hints last week that it would go through committee before getting a CBO score. Which is not how it's supposed to work.
But Ryan wants his repeal—and he's going to try to shove it through, no matter what.