Ryan says House to revisit health care, offers no details
WASHINGTON — Speaker Paul Ryan said Tuesday he’s going to give battered House Republicans another crack at a health care overhaul. But he offered no timeline, and leaders haven’t resolved how to overcome the deep GOP divisions that crumpled their legislation last week in a humiliating retreat for themselves and President Donald Trump.
“We are all going to work together and listen together until we get this right,” Ryan told reporters after House Republicans met for the first time since he averted a Friday vote on a GOP health care bill that faced certain defeat. “It is just too important.”
The doomed GOP bill would have eliminated former President Barack Obama’s mandate for people to carry insurance or face fines and would have shrunk a Medicaid expansion. It relied on tax credits to help consumers purchase insurance that for many people would be less generous than under Obama’s statute.
Republican lawmakers, conservatives and moderates alike, emerged from Tuesday’s meeting saying there was a consensus to address the issue again, preferably soon. The closed-door meeting lasted nearly two hours, causing Ryan to delay his news conference.