President Trump and his aides will leave no stone unturned as they approach a major hurdle this week that could drive the legislative process forward on repealing and replacing Obamacare — Thursday’s floor vote on Republican healthcare reform legislation.
According to a schedule obtained by the Washington Examiner, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price will meet with key industry leaders and stakeholders on Tuesday and later conduct a telephone town hall with the National Federation of Independent Business. Trump will head to Capitol Hill to deliver remarks to the House Republican Conference, while Vice President Mike Pence attends the Senate Policy Lunch and conducts meetings with lawmakers from both chambers in the afternoon.
Trump will then participate in a roundtable on Wednesday with Seema Verma, his recently confirmed administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Price will speak at an Americans for Tax Reform meeting and Pence will continue to hold “numerous meetings” with lawmakers.
“The Administration is confident that the American Health Care Act is headed in the right direction with broad support,” a White House official told the Washington Examiner.
The veteran negotiator has spent the last two weeks selling “phase one” of his administration’s replacement plan to conservative lawmakers and influential free-market groups who have derisively nicknamed the legislation “Obamacare lite.”
Sources familiar with the president’s strategy said he will keep an even busier schedule ahead of Thursday’s vote on the American Health Care Act and is working with GOP leadership to increase the bill’s appeal in the eleventh hour.
“It is my understanding that they’ve set up a system where they plan to have tentacles in every corner of Capitol Hill this week,” a GOP leadership aide told the Washington Examiner.
Trump put enhanced Medicaid flexibility on the table during a meeting with Republican Study Committee members last week and wined and dined two of Capitol Hill’s most conservative residents – House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows, R-N.C., and Utah Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah – at his Mar-a-Lago resort over the weekend. Additionally, the president has huddled twice with Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, since rolling out his healthcare bill and told a group of 20 House GOP whips that he will go to extraordinary lengths to ensure Americans witness true legislative relief from the Affordable Care Act.
The Trump-backed healthcare bill will need 218 House votes to continue onto the Senate for markup, and reaching that threshold has proved no small feat for the president and House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., to accomplish. White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters on Monday that adjustments will be made to the bill before the full House votes later this week.
“Speaker Ryan detailed some additions and ideas and suggestions” that Trump “is considering, and there are some staff-level discussions that occurred over the weekend,” Spicer said, adding that the president will “continue to make sure that we do everything we can” to ensure the bill is palatable enough to avoid a scenario where more than 21 Republican members defect.
“We think we should be offering even more assistance than the bill currently does” for low-income seniors, Ryan told Fox News on Sunday. He noted that changes could be made to tax credits installed in the current legislation in an effort to broaden the bill’s support among the Republican rank-and-file.
White House officials said Trump will continue to work in tandem with Ryan by conducting “direct outreach” to GOP holdouts and conservative groups and by ensuring that members of his administration do the same.
