Dozens of Republicans in both the House and the Senate have publicly said they either oppose or are unsure about the House health care bill championed by Speaker Paul Ryan. While some of these members are hardline conservatives who say the bill is just Obamacare-lite, others represent states and districts that have seen the largest decreases in the uninsured rate under Obamacare.
We've mapped out the drop in the uninsured rate on both a state and county level between 2013 and 2016, or from the year before Obamacare was implemented until last year. We then looked at how this decrease in the uninsured rate compares with detractors (we used an excellent list compiled by the Washington Post). While there are some conservative exceptions, most of the wavering Republicans represent voters who could have a lot to lose.
Remember Marathon Pharmaceuticals? The drug company that received federal approval last month for an old drug to treat the rare Duchenne muscular dystrophy disorder, and then set the annual list price at $89,000 that incensed the public? Well, it's passing the controversy off to another company.
Marathon said Thursday it was selling deflazacort (brand name Emflaza) to PTC Therapeutics for $140 million and royalty payments of at least 20% of sales. Marathon could also gain a one-time $50 million bonus based on sales.
Deflazacort is available outside the United States for less than $2,000 per year. PTC, which has been working on a separate Duchenne product, said they would "re-examine" the newly acquired drug's price — far from a certainty that the price will be lowered.
The White House and House Republican leaders have one urgent mission in the coming days: get those Republican holdouts back on board the Obamacare repeal train. They're trying to do it by making concessions to the conservatives — though they don't seem to be in sync on which ones they're willing to make. And some of the changes could hurt them in the Senate, but the top priority right now is to just get it through the House.
There's been a lot of movement on this in the last couple of days, so here's where it stands now.
Our big takeaway: President Trump is far more open than House leadership to negotiating the details of the Obamacare replacement plan. It's striking that he called the current bill "very preliminary." No wonder such mixed messages were flying around Capitol Hill this afternoon.
Five key grabs from Trump's interview Wednesday night with Fox News' Tucker Carlson:
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