Freedom Caucus leaders near deal on health care plan

WASHINGTON – White House officials and several Republican lawmakers claimed Tuesday they were nearing a deal on health care legislation with the House Freedom Caucus, with at least three leading figures in the hard-line group ready to support an overhaul after the dramatic collapse of talks last month.

Reps. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, – all leaders of the Freedom Caucus and central figures in the latest discussions – signaled Tuesday they are ready to support a new plan, according to two White House officials who were not authorized to speak publicly. A lawmaker close to the Freedom Caucus later confirmed that those members were close to or ready to support the tweaked bill.

“There’s no definitive statement yet,” Meadows said on his way into the House chamber on Tuesday evening.

“We’ve got a meeting tomorrow night!” said Jordan, who refused to elaborate.

Labrador refused to comment entirely.

The agreement at the crux of the revised bill would allow states to opt out of some insurance regulations in the Affordable Care Act. Through a federal waiver, insurers could be freed from a requirement to cover certain essential health benefits as defined by the federal government. And while they would still be required to cover people with preexisting conditions, they could charge those patients higher premiums.

The language was crafted jointly in recent days by Rep. Tom MacArthur, R-N.J., the co-chairman of the moderate Tuesday Group, and Meadows, who heads the Freedom Caucus, with White House officials involved in those conversations, the officials said.

White House officials said Tuesday that MacArthur made clear during the discussions that he wanted states such as New Jersey to be able to keep some mandates under the law, while Meadows wanted states to have the option of opting out of the insurance requirements.

Text of the new bill was unavailable Tuesday, however, and any new proposal would have to surmount the same obstacles that stalled the House GOP leadership’s plan before Congress left for a two-week recess in early April.

“The key to getting this across the finish line doesn’t rest with the Tuesday Group. It rests with the Freedom Caucus,” said Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y., a member of the centrist group, earlier Tuesday.

The president has been fitfully trying to restart health care talks after House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., abruptly pulled the American Health Care Act from the floor at the end of March. Trump at first said the health care issue was dead but then revived talks. Trump seems intent on getting a concrete legislative win, or at least flashes of progress in that direction, as his administration approaches the 100-day mark.

Republicans close to House GOP leaders said Tuesday they remain skeptical of how much support would be behind any new legislation, and said House leaders are not driving the discussions with the Freedom Caucus.

Other Freedom Caucus members, such as Rep. David Brat, R-Va., told reporters Tuesday evening that they are likely to support the compromise, while others declined to comment, saying they have not yet seen the text of the agreement.

Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., a deficit hawk and Freedom Caucus member who opposed the AHCA, said he would review the amendment and was encouraged by progress toward “more power given to states to determine the insurance company-state-citizen relationship.”

“Essential benefits and all the other mandates may be affordable in a wealthy state, but unaffordable in a poorer state like Mississippi or Alabama that causes people to go from some insurance to no health insurance,” Brooks said.

Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., a Freedom Caucus member who worried last month that the process was going too fast, would not rule out a vote if the legislation met his standard.

“You react to what comes, and it looks like it’s coming,” Sanford said.

The carrot for conservatives is the opportunity for states to apply for waivers from some of the ACA’s mandates, including its requirement for insurers to cover essential health benefits and its ban on swelling premiums for people with preexisting health conditions. Many conservatives don’t like leaving the law’s insurance regulations in place, but the waiver provision allows them to argue that they’re giving states more control over the situation.

But the revisions would also restore the law’s federal essential health benefits requirements for states that don’t obtain a waiver from them. The original bill would have turned over those regulations completely to the states.

The developments follow a weekend of intense private discussions among various blocs that previously balked at the House GOP leadership plan, which Trump embraced.

Those talks, according to the White House officials, were mostly concentrated on the insurance requirements in the current law, with Freedom Caucus leaders offering recommended changes to the White House. Many of their changes were accepted, according to multiple people involved at the White House and on Capitol Hill, although the specifics were not shared.

A House leadership ally, speaking under the condition of anonymity to talk candidly, said the White House was potentially “setting itself up to fall” since the House leadership was not intimately involved in crafting a revised bill, and remained doubtful of the caucus’s commitment to securing passage. White House officials said they remained confident that progress was being made.

The officials added that the House chief deputy whip, Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., was fully briefed on the negotiations and had keptother House leaders apprised of the deliberations.

Key administration figures involved in the talks included Vice President Mike Pence, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, and chief strategist Stephen Bannon, an official said.