The conversations with members will also focus on the fate of expiring Obamacare tax credits.
House committee chairs will begin having listening sessions next week with groups of Republican members on health care policy and the fate of expiring Obamacare subsidies.
Members need to be heard out, said a person granted anonymity to describe internal party dynamics, and GOP leadership plans to structure the talks loosely on the brainstorming sessions that preceded the drafting of the party’s sweeping domestic policy megabill earlier this year.
“We’re going to build a coalition, and soon as we have the coalition ready to go, we’ll move legislation as quickly as we can,” said House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) in an interview Wednesday.
He said Republicans would work with “any willing partners” and didn’t rule out a health care vote in the House before the end of the year: “There very well could be.”
It’s a sign the House is prepared to engage on the issue despite Speaker Mike Johnson’s refusal to commit to holding a floor vote to extend the tax credits before the Dec. 31 deadline. His posture stands in contrast with his counterparts across the Capitol, where Senate Majority Leader John Thune promised Democrats a mid-December vote on extension legislation in exchange for Democrats shoring up the necessary support to reopen the government.
Congressional Republicans, though, are divided broadly over how to address rising health care costs. Some GOP lawmakers, including moderates and vulnerable incumbents, want to band together with Democrats to extend the enhanced premium tax credits due to expire at the end of the year.
“In the end, we’re going to have some kind of … negotiated agreement on these ACA tax credits, and it’s going to look a lot like what we just proposed,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) in an interview Wednesday, who recently proposed a bipartisan set of principles for a compromise on the subsidies with fellow Republican Rep. Jeff Hurd of Colorado and Democratic Reps. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey and Tom Suozzi of New York.
But other Republicans — among them members of the influential House Republican Study Committee — have been discussing a party-line approach on a conservative health care package that would lower costs in other ways. Some Senate Republicans are calling on an end to the Obamacare tax credits altogether and instead fund tax-advantaged health savings accounts for individuals to pay directly for care.
Bacon threw cold water on the notion that the GOP should pursue a more aggressive health policy overhaul at this time: “We’re not going to be able to come up with these huge reforms” before Dec. 31, he said.
Across the aisle, House Democrats hope to pressure Republicans into signing a so-called discharge petition to move a bill that would extend the subsidies for three years. The procedural maneuver would allow rank-and-file members to circumvent leadership to force a vote on legislation if the petition gets 218 signatures.
Bacon isn’t convinced the gambit will work, saying he would only support such an effort if an extension was paired with the overhauls he’s seeking with Hurd, Gottheimer and Suozzi — among them imposing a a new income cap on the credits and measures that would crack down on fraud in the health insurance marketplaces.
Rep. Jeff Van Drew (D-N.J.), however, said Republicans should be prepared move a “clean” one-year extension of the subsidies if they don’t have a better plan.
“I would possibly be supportive. I have to look at the bill and know substantively what it has in it for a one-year renewal, or a good, sufficient substitute,” said Van Drew, when asked if he would sign onto the discharge petition. “It’s just about providing health care. I’m sick of the politics of all this.”
Rep. Nick Lalota (R-N.Y.) had a different take. He pointed to an amendment that Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) tried to force onto the government funding package Monday that would have secured clean extension. LaLota noted that the amendment only garnered 47 votes from lawmakers who caucus with Democrats.
“It just doesn’t have the votes in the Senate,” LaLota said. ” Do something that invests in America’s healthcare, something like Trump said that goes more directly to patients and then also has income caps as well.”
Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.