White House Fails to Sway Governors on Senate Health Care Bill
White House Fails to Sway Governors on Senate Health Care Bill :- The White House pulled out the big guns this weekend at the governors’ summer meeting, in an attempt to gain support for the Senate health care bill that would repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.
After a visit Friday from Vice President Mike Pence, the governors met Saturday morning with Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price and Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
But based on the governors’ reactions, the Administration’s attempt was largely unsuccessful and seemed to further frustrate many of them.
Though he appreciated Pence’s presence at the meeting as a former governor, Democratic Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe says he found Pence’s speech “a little strident,” adding that he doesn’t think any of the state legislators have changed their minds on the bill.
During his time in Providence, the vice president held private meetings with multiple governors considered key to the bill’s passage, including arguably the most important player, Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval. The Republican governor, whose opinion is expected to have a major impact on the vote of Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., said Saturday his opinion has yet to change. With two senators already vowing to block the vote, a third would kill the bill.
Republican leaders on Saturday night announced a delayed vote on the bill, as Arizona Sen. John McCain recovers from eye surgery this week. The new timeline adds to the GOP’s anxiety, as senators –and their state governors– are left with more room to bring the legislation to a halt. The bill also faces strident opposition from many health industry groups.
The governors watched a presentation in a closed session Saturday morning, where a nonpartisan heath care expert explained the inner-workings of the new legislation and how it would affect their states. They then participated in a discussion with secretary Price and administrator Verma.
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, who has been outspoken about his issues with the bill, says Price and Verma were quick to take “strong exception” to the health care expert’s information.
“[They] also said, by the way, the CBO is going to score this and we don’t believe they understand how the bill works,” Edwards says. “And the cuts to the medicaid program won’t be as steep as they’re gonna tell you and the decline in insurance is not gonna be as steep as they’re gonna tell you.”
The night before, two White House aides published an Op-Ed in The Washington Post attempting to discredit the Congressional Budget Office’s evaluation, which is expected to be released within days.
Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, who says her opposition to the legislation definitely has not changed, says she thinks the morning meeting left many questions unanswered.
“We asked a lot of questions about where the money is going to come from and how much the states are going to have to come up with, and they were just very thin on specifics,” she says.
Many of the governors made a common point throughout the day: sure, they can be presented with information from White House officials, but what they really want and need is a seat at the table.
“The point i tried to make is we’re here, we have to administer these programs and there’s very little outreach to the governors. We want to be at the table,” McAuliffe says.
“The president’s goal during the campaign was that everybody gets covered [by insurance] with cheaper and better results. Nothing we’ve seen so far gets us anywhere close to where that is and that’s where we want to work together to get us to that goal,” he adds.
Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, says he would like to have governors and senators from both parties sit down together to create a bipartisan approach.
“I believe in my heart that there’s a way to control the medical inflation in this country without rolling back coverage,” he says. “It’s as simple as that.”
source:https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2017-07-16/white-house-fails-to-sway-governors-on-senate-health-care-bill
