Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson skeptical House GOP health care bill can pass in 2017

WASHINGTON - Senate Republican Ron Johnson of Wisconsin expressed deep skepticism Tuesday about the Obamacare replacement bill his party is struggling to pass in the U.S. House this week.

“I’ve got a lot of problems with the House bill as it’s written right now,” Johnson said at a gathering hosted by WisPolitics.com.

“I’m going to need a lot more information, and I think a lot more modifications to this bill” before voting for it, he told a reporter after the event.

Johnson’s qualms about a plan championed by House Speaker Paul Ryan, his fellow Wisconsin Republican, underscore the challenges Republicans face in getting a health care measure to President Donald Trump’s desk, despite their control of both chambers. Should a bill pass the House, the GOP can probably afford no more than two defections in the Senate, where there are 52 Republican members.

Johnson told a reporter that “skeptical” was an “understatement” in describing his attitude toward the plan.

Asked at the forum if he is confident that an Obamacare replacement bill will pass Congress this year, Johnson said, “No.”

Asked why, he said: “Because it’s really hard. We are seven years into the implementation of Obamacare. … You don’t undo that harm with a simple stroke of the pen on a simple ‘repeal and replace.' ”

The GOP bill is expected to go to the House floor Thursday.

Johnson, who is a fierce critic of Obamacare, criticized the bill on both policy and political grounds.

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He noted that the House proposal reduces the overall pot of money available under Obamacare to subsidize the purchase of insurance by enrollees.

But at the same time, it makes subsidies available to a larger number of people by expanding eligibility to those with higher incomes.

“Why spread out the subsidies to more people? Why expand the entitlement? It doesn’t make any sense,” he told a reporter Tuesday.

The effect, Johnson noted, is to reduce the subsidies going to poorer people while giving some people with higher incomes an entirely new benefit.

Lower-income people get less, he said, “but we’re helping (higher-income) people that Obamacare never helped. Politically, it doesn’t make any sense. Economically, it doesn’t make any sense.”

Johnson said Republicans would have been better off focusing “like a laser” on how to best “repair the damage” done by Obamacare and “bring down the cost of health care together with the cost of insurance premiums that have skyrocketed.”

Said Johnson: “It starts with focusing on what we should be focusing on — the damage, fixing that, getting the confidence of the American public (that) we actually know what we’re doing. And then why not tie any kind of reduction in the subsidies to the actual reduction in premiums?”

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Johnson said there was an “absence of information” about the impact of the House bill other than the Congressional Budget Office report, which “was not particularly supportive.”

Said Johnson: “Let’s be honest. Not a whole lot of people are loving the (House bill) right now. I will not vote to support it until I have enough information that whatever we’re going to pass will work.”

One liberal group in Wisconsin suggested it was odd for Johnson to be suggesting his party needs to slow down on repealing Obamacare after his longstanding criticism of the Affordable Care Act.

"For seven years, Senator Johnson has been calling the ACA the biggest 'assault on freedom in our lifetime,' so how on earth does he not have a replacement plan ready to go?" said Scot Ross of One Wisconsin Now.

While Johnson is skeptical but undecided on the health care bill, at least two GOP senators reiterated Tuesday their opposition to the House bill — Mike Lee of Utah and Tom Cotton of Arkansas.