Ohio senators Brown, Portman help kill plan to repeal Obamacare without replacement

Instead, the Senate Wednesday killed a conservative-backed measure which would have simply dismantled the law without a replacement. Republican Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio and Democrat Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio joined 53 other senators in killing the measure.

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That followed a Tuesday vote in which Senate Republicans could muster just 43 votes for a bill championed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. Portman backed that plan; Brown did not.

Faced with both rebukes, Senate GOP leaders are trying to assemble the 51 votes necessary to pass a less controversial bill which would eliminate the financial penalties imposed on Americans who refuse to buy federally subsidized policies in the independent market.

The bill also could include a repeal of some of the taxes used to finance Obamacare, such as an excise tax on companies producing medical devices.

In essence, the bill would be the bare minimum of what could pass – and even that outcome is uncertain.

Because the House approved its own version of overhauling Obamacare in May, if Senate Republicans pass even a stripped-down bill, they have a chance to produce a broader measure in a conference committee with House Republicans.

Both the Senate and House would then have to approve the product which emerges from the conference committee.

James Angel, a professor at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, said Republicans are operating under the notion of “we’ve just got to pass something,” knowing that their majorities may be in danger as the 2018 midterm elections approach.

“Anything they do, they’ve got to do in this session,” he said. “And they’re so desperate to do something that they’re going to do something really stupid … Republicans are making the same mistakes Democrats made (in 2010) and trying to ram something through on a totally partisan basis without asking, ‘OK, what makes good economic sense?’”

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One Republican strategist said it would be a difficult path for Senate Republicans, saying “it is absolutely accurate to say they got on the field without knowing how they would get off of it.”

Without saying he would support the revised strategy, Portman said “we would go into conference with the House and come out with a more comprehensive bill” which would include stabilizing the federally subsidized marketplaces in each states where middle-income people can buy individual insurance plans.

In voting against a straight repeal of the 2010 law on Wednesday, Portman – whose status as a swing-state senator puts him very much in the spotlight on this issue - reversed himself from 2015, when he supported a measure which dismantled Obamacare without devising a substitute. At the time, Senate and House Republicans knew President Barack Obama would kill the measure with a veto.

“The landscape has changed entirely since 2015,” Portman said in explaining why he joined six other Republicans in killing the amendment. “Back then we had a competitive market in Ohio. We had multiple insurance companies in every county. Now we don’t. We’ve got 19 counties without a single insurer.”

The Senate Republican version rejected Tuesday included Portman’s proposal to add $100 billion for those moving off Medicaid and a proposal by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to allow insurers to sell stripped-down, inexpensive plans on the individual markets. Portman has expressed deep reservations about many of the GOP plans offered, fearing they don’t do enough to preserve those who have used the 2010 law’s Medicaid expansion to receive treatment for opioid addiction.

Portman expressed hope that his amendment eventually be included in a compromise between House and Senate negotiators.

But in a conference call Wednesday, Brown said adding $100 billion to help those being removed from Medicaid was “spitting in the ocean.”

“You don’t take away the insurance of cancer patients and then provide a federal grant to pay for oncologist,” Brown said. “It simply doesn’t work.”