Axios

Anthem executives made an interesting comment to analysts at Barclays on Wednesday. According to a research note sent to investors after the meeting, Anthem believes most of the suspended Obamacare tax on health insurance companies "will go toward reducing the cost of health care for members, while a smaller portion will go to increasing EPS," or earnings per share.

Last year, Congress froze the health insurer fee for 2017, and the one-year moratorium means the federal government is foregoing $13.9 billion — money that helps pay for Obamacare's subsidies for low-income people.

Why this matters: The health insurance industry has been adamant that repealing Obamacare's annual fee on insurance companies will lower premiums for everyone. The Republican Obamacare replacement permanently eliminates it. But it's also clear the major for-profit carriers like Anthem want the tax gone in part so they can pump up stock prices and funnel money back to shareholders.

Anthem's comments build on an analysis from Goldman Sachs last year, which found insurers were raising premiums for 2017 higher than expected, "implying that insurers may not be fully adjusting their renewal proposals for the absence of the fee."

Rep. Mark Meadows, chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, says he's really trying to find a deal on Obamacare repeal and replacement. Not only has he — along with plenty of other conservatives — been in conversations with the administration, but he's also reaching out to senators who are on the fence about the House bill to try to find middle-ground solutions.

Why it matters: House leadership says the bill isn't going to change. Meadows, who says the current bill won't pass, is trying to work with everyone else to make sure the bill does, in fact, change.

Things have gotten so bad at Adeptus Health that the emergency room chain has hired a chief restructuring officer and retained investment bank Houlihan Lokey to help explore "various strategic alternatives," the company disclosed in a federal filing. Adeptus, backed by private-equity firm Sterling Partners, still hasn't released its 2016 financial documents.

If Adeptus chooses to sell and is able to find a buyer, which is far from guaranteed given its precipitous fall since its initial public offering in 2014, it would likely sell for pennies on the dollar. Adeptus' stock cratered to an all-time low of $1.48 on Tuesday, its market cap is $21 million today compared with a high of $2.5 billion in 2015, and it is facing class-action securities lawsuits.

Data: Money.net; Chart: Andrew Witherspoon / Axios

The lesson: Adeptus heralded freestanding emergency rooms as a more convenient way to get care, but the facilities have been expensive to run and have led to exorbitant charges for some patients.

House GOP leadership released the text of their plan to repeal and replace Obamacare last week, and they got quite a bit of pushback on their own side of the aisle. With a less-than-stellar CBO report yesterday, more Republicans are expected to run for the hills. Here's a running list of conservative organizations and congresspeople across speaking out against the American Health Care Act.

When the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released its worst-than-expected estimate just after 4 p.m. that 24 million people would lose coverage under Trumpcare in 10 years (14 million next year), Axios' David Nather accompanied his flash post with a GIF of a mushroom cloud.

The next few days will tell us whether Republican leaders prepared adequately for the disastrous Congressional Budget Office estimates of the House Obamacare replacement bill. It's one thing to say, "we're not going to compete with a law that forces everyone to buy coverage." It's another thing to fight headlines about 24 million Americans losing coverage.