GOP health bill on the brink hours from House showdown vote

WASHINGTON (AP) — The GOP’s long-promised legislation to repeal and replace “Obamacare” stood on the brink just hours before Republican leaders planned to put it on the House floor for a showdown vote. Short of support, GOP leaders looked to President Donald Trump to close the deal with a crucial bloc of conservatives, in the first major legislative test of his young presidency.

Trump made a final pitch to the public Thursday. In a video posted on his official presidential Twitter account, he asked people to call their lawmakers in support of the legislation.

“Americans were told Obamacare would bring down prices and increase options. You were told that you could keep your plan and keep your doctor,” Trump said. “You were given many, many false stories, the fact is you were given many lies. Go with our plan, it’s going to be terrific.”

The stakes could hardly be higher for a party that gained monopoly control of Washington largely on promises to get rid of former President Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement and replace it with something better. Now Republicans are staring at the possibility of failure at the very moment of truth, an outcome that would be a crushing political defeat for Trump and Hill GOP leaders and would throw prospects for other legislative achievements into extreme uncertainty.

Frenzied last-minute wheeling and dealing was under way on Capitol Hill and the White House, where Trump summoned the balky conservative Freedom Caucus to meet with him mid-day Thursday, ahead of the planned vote. But concessions being offered to the conservatives, who sought to limit requirements for health plans to offer certain benefits including substance abuse and maternity care, appeared to be scaring off moderate Republicans.

The Republican legislation would halt Obama’s tax penalties against people who don’t buy coverage and cut the federal-state Medicaid program for low earners, which the Obama statute had expanded. It would provide tax credits to help people pay medical bills, though generally skimpier than the aid Obama’s statute provides. It also would allow insurers to charge older Americans more and repeal tax boosts the law imposed on high-income people and health industry companies.

Tension has been building in advance of the critical vote, and a late-night meeting of moderate-leaning members in Speaker Paul Ryan’s office Wednesday broke up without resolution or a deal as most lawmakers and Ryan himself left out of side exits and avoided talking to reporters.

One lawmaker present, GOP Rep. Ryan Costello of Pennsylvania, said members had been asked to weigh in on the changes being offered to the Freedom Caucus. He demurred on how the concessions might impact his vote, but said, “The Freedom Caucus has presented what it will take for them to make some ‘yeses’ and I think there are a lot of members who will now have to evaluate things a little bit further.”