You're listening to Bloomberg Law. President Trump and House Republicans held a celebratory press conference yesterday after the House passed a sweeping health insurance bill, but the road to ultimate passage of a Republican health insurance law maybe a long one. Some Senate Republicans have concerns about various provisions of the House bills, such as its changes to Medicaid, and almost immediately, Senate Republicans said that rather than take up the House bill,
the Senate would write its own health care bill. Here with us to talk about what's likely to happen as they Senate considers health insurance are Laura Littvan and Stephen Dennis Bloomberg News congressional reporters. Laura, what are senators saying about what happens next? They're saying they're going to take their time and they want to really closely examine the provisions of the House bill, and that they want to go their own road. They want to carefully consider some
of the objections that members have. They are divided within their party. You have moderates who are concerned about the effective of people on people of pre existing who have pre existing conditions. Uh, Some members are concerned about eight hundred billion in Medicaid cuts over ten years UM. Others are concerned about the size of tax cuts. Those are on the moderate wing and on the conservative wing you have some like Grand Paul who would really like to
simply repeal Obamacare. So there's a big divide. And or In Hatch has said that he wants to craft a measure that can get fifty one votes. He really only needs fifty votes. So Stephen, is it possible, as you look at the Senate to get fifty votes? Yeah, I mean, ultimately they can lose to Senate Republicans. They're not gonna get any Democrats for this. As long as those tax cuts in there, it's going to be radioactive for Democrats. And as long as there's a bill that's gonna have
millions of people lose health insurance. And you know the House bill, Uh, we don't have the final CBO score yet, but the original version said it would result in twenty four million people fewer people having health insurance in ten years. That's a tough pill to swallow for a lot of these moderates, And if you look at the individual impact in each state, that's something that's going to really gonna
come into play if you look at like Alaska. Lisa Murkowski, who told me yesterday in an interview that she wants to start with a clean slate. That House bill has big problems for Alaska because it's a high cost state. Currently, people on the insurance markets who get subsidies have huge
subsidies because the costs are so high. Well, those huge subsidies get turned into a two thousand dollar to four thousand dollar flat tax credit under the House bill, and so suddenly people could see a forty dollar jump in premiums. That's not cool for Lisa Murkowski. She's not gonna vote for that. They're gonna need to have to change the bill to have more help, especially for seniors who could
get really skyrocketing premiums. If you're ages fifty to sixty four and you make about twenty five dollars a year, CBO said, the House bill could see s seven d
increase in your premiums. That's not affordable. That's one of the features of the House bill though, because if you want to get premiums down for everybody else, you have to charge older people more, or you have to charge people with pre existing conditions more or you need to get rid of some of the benefits in the Affordable Care Act, things like maternity coverage, prescription drug coverage, and the like, and that all that stuff is gonna be
very emotional, very tough to get people on board. There's a working group with thirteen men on it right now, Senate Republican men who have been meeting uh the last several weeks to try and come up with their own bill. But the real moderates um that they need to get on board, which includes Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. He's a doctor who served in a charity hospital for a couple of decades, Susan Collins of Maine, and Murkowski. Without those three moderates, you cannot pass a bill in the Senate.
So ultimate they're gonna have to make at least a couple of those moderates happy to get to that ultimate fifty votes plus Mike Pennce casting the tie breaking vote, and that might take many, many weeks. The original plan a couple of months ago, when they wanted to have this Lightning Strike bill passed within weeks of Donald Trump taking office. The original plan was the Senate would pass the bill the week after the House that's not no longer operative, and part of it is a rebranding exercise.
I think the House bill has become so toxic politically. It's it's poll numbers are terrible, and the Senate thinks, okay, well, even if we're gonna keep a lot of the same elements we wanted to call it the Senate Bill, it'll it'll pull better that way than than have a House bill that's been so tainted by that CBO score and by month after month of very difficult coverage and a lot of messy and loud town halls. And so I do think that the sentence is probably gonna take a
little bit more time. But they don't have that much time because a lot of the insurance companies are trying to put together their plans for next year, and in May and June is when they make those decisions on what the rates are going to be, whether or not they're going to be in a state or not. And Lamar Alexandrew's the Health chairman, has Uh is facing the very real prospect that there will be no plans at
all in his state. So he has a sense of urgency to get something done in the next few weeks. But like I said, it's not gonna be easy. Laura, we have about forty five seconds here. But is the you know, they they're basing their what they're gonna do on the idea that they don't need the Democrats. They can't be feel abustard. Is there anything in the law
it's going to prevent them from doing this? Through what's called the reconciliation process, they could be prevented from moving some very important aspects of it through, and that includes the changes that were made in the House to try to get it through to get more palatable to conservatives that would let states opt out of the pre existing condition aspects of the Affordable Care Act and possibly impose high allow people who have pre existing conditions to see
higher premiums if the state offers a high risk pool. That's a very important part of getting it back through the House potentially, and that may not be able to go through the Senate with just fifty one votes. Well, our thanks to Bloomberg News reporters Laura Lidvan and Stephen Dennis for being with us today to talk about what's going to happen in the Senate on health insurance after
the House has passed its bill. Yesterday, coming up on Bloomberg Law, President Trump signed a religious freedom executive Order, but a lot of people are saying that it doesn't really accomplish very much. We'll be talking about that, and also the Eagles are suing the Hotel California. That's coming up on Bloomberg Law on Bloomberg Radio. This is Bloomberg