House Speaker Paul D. Ryan said Wednesday lawmakers are in the midst of making “refinements” and “improvements” to the House GOP’s legislation to roll back parts of Obamacare while saying the bill’s “major components” are staying intact.
“Obviously, as we go through this we make refinements and improvements to the bill. That is occurring. That’s how the legislative process works,” Mr. Ryan said on Fox Business Network.
He said senators “are not helpless to what the House does.”
“They amend it if they want to amend it and they do what they want to do with the bill, because that’s how the legislative process works,” Mr. Ryan said.
Some GOP senators have expressed concern about how the new legislation will affect Medicaid.
“We’re going through the process here. We feel very good where we are. We’re making the kinds of improvements and refinements that we think make this bill better,” Mr. Ryan said, also saying the “major components” are staying intact.
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“Because this is something we wrote with President Trump. This is something we wrote with the Senate committees,” he said.
Mr. Ryan has also been facing pressure from some House conservatives who want Obamacare repealed immediately and in its entirety.
“We don’t have the votes for just a full repeal because so many of our members, and the president included, said repeal and replace,” he said.
The Congressional Budget Office said this week that the measure would reduce deficits by $337 billion over the course of a decade, with a reduction of close to $900 billion in federal outlays for Medicaid accounting for much of the savings.
The CBO also said that about 24 million fewer people would be covered a decade from now compared to what would happen under the current law.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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