Members of the Trump administration are “convinced we’ve got the votes” to repeal and replace ObamaCare this week, White House economic adviser Gary Cohn said on Monday.
“Do we have the votes for health care? I think we do. This is going be a great week,” Cohn said on “CBS This Morning. ” “We’re going to get health care down to the floor of the house. We’re convinced we’ve got the votes and we’re going to keep moving on with our agenda.”
White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus echoed Cohn’s comments on CBS moments later.
“I think we will, I think it will happen this week. So much has been made of this legislation and the timing. … This will be one of the fastest signature pieces of legislation since Roosevelt, I believe,” he said.
As it stands now, the count is “five or six” votes short of the 216 needed for passage, mostly moderate Republican holdouts and two House Freedom Caucus members who are facing intense pressure in their districts, according to a House source.
“There are a lot of people who are a reluctant yes on this and the second it looks like it’s going down, they could flop. But I do think part of the pitch to members who are reluctant is that this will be changed in the Senate, ” the source said, predicting a vote by Wednesday or Thursday.
“I think there’s some recognition that it needs to pass this week or it’s going to lose momentum,” the source said. “The longer we drag this out, the more [the White House] is going to want to push us on to the next thing.”
President Trump made repealing and replacing former President Obama’s signature healthcare plan a centerpiece of his campaign, but so far the Republican-controlled Congress has been unable to follow through on the pledge.
Two efforts to get the GOP-backed American Health Care Act through the House were ditched after Republican leaders couldn’t come up with the necessary votes.
Although recent changes have gotten more conservative Republicans to come on board, some moderates in the House caucus fear those new provisions could knock vulnerable Americans off the health care rolls.
“Too many people are losing coverage. There’s got to be a better way to do this,” Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) told MSNBC on Monday.
He said an amendment to AHCA that would allow states to seek waivers on certain essential benefits, including pre-existing conditions and rules barring price discrimination against high-risk patients, make the measure difficult to support.
But Trump, in an interview Monday with Bloomberg News confirmed coverage of pre-existing conditions will be included.
“I want it to be good for sick people. It’s not in its final form right now,” he said. “It will be every bit as good on pre-existing conditions as Obamacare.”
White House spokesman Sean Spicer on Monday said many of ObamaCare’s guaranteed issue requirements are preserved, but states would be able to get waivers in an effort to keep premiums low.
“When I say the whole goal of this is to give the states the flexibility to get lower premiums,” he said. “That’s the goal all around, is to make sure that the system we employ gets it down.”
Complicating the matter is that Congress leaves for a one-week recess on Thursday that could drain any momentum.
And the House and Senate are also on a collision course with arcane Congressional rules that could ultimately derail the plan in the Senate.
Under a policy called reconciliation, legislation can pass on a simple majority vote. But Republicans are pushing tax reform. And once that is passed they lose their ability to use reconciliation under this budget, which would then require a 60-vote margin to pass the healthcare bill in the Senate.
That means the 52 Republicans in the chamber would need eight Democrats to cross party lines to pass the bill – an unlikely proposition.
“This is it,” an administration official told Politico. “We get it done now, or we don’t get it done ever.”
