Lee, Hatch differ on whether to move on from health care reform


Save Story
Leer en español

Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes

This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.

SALT LAKE CITY — Despite House Republicans' high-profile failure to repeal and replace Obamacare last week, Utah Sen. Mike Lee says it's too early to give up on rewriting the 7-year-old law.

"The worst thing Congress could do is abandon health care reform entirely," the Utah Republican wrote in a Deseret News op-ed Wednesday. "We've come too far and we were too close to a deal last week to give up now."

President Donald Trump announced he would move on to tax reform after his first attempt to make a deal on health care failed. But Tuesday night he predicted an agreement will happen "very quickly," according to the Associated Press.

"I know that we're all going to make a deal on health care, and that's such an easy one," he said.

Lee, a fierce opponent of the GOP bill, said Congress should take its time and get it right. He noted that lawmakers spent just 17 days debating the Republican plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

It took President Barack Obama 187 days to pass his signature health care law, while welfare reform took 56 days in 1996 and tax reform 323 days in 1986, according to the senator.

"An issue as complex as health care clearly deserves more than 17 days of hasty discussion," Lee said.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said whether "repeal and replace" resurfaces depends on what House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., wants to do.

"I don't know whether he'll try to bring that up again, but we have to move on tax reform," Hatch told the National Journal on Tuesday. "And that's maybe even more important than the health care bill."

Jason Stevenson, Utah Health Policy Project education and communications director, said flaws in the proposed American Health Care Act became evident in even the short time Congress considered it.

"I don't think people are going to go back and touch that bill," he said.

Related

The failure of the Republican plan is an opportunity to build bipartisan support for "surgical fixes" to the Affordable Care Act, according to Stevenson.

"There's definitely a bipartisan and roll-up-your-sleeves-and-fix-it way forward, but you can't harm the people who have the insurance right now because that really defeats the purpose of what this legislation has done," he said.

Stevenson said Lee knows how to reach across party lines and that is the route forward. "But we also want to keep in mind what people want from their health insurance," he said, listing premiums, deductibles and co-pays as things people are most concerned about.

Lee said he opposed the American Health Care Act because it would have failed to reduce insurance premiums for Utahns.

Each state has different populations with different health care needs and there is no reason to force everyone to buy the same health care package, he said. The decision belongs to states, communities and families, not Washington politicians and bureaucrats, he said.

Lee said Americans should be free to pay for the amount of health care that they want, when they want it. If families want a high-deductible plan to cover only big emergencies or a more expensive plan to cover every trip to the doctor, they should be able to buy that, he said.

Utah's four House members — all Republicans — were frustrated about the bill being abruptly pulled and have signaled uncertainty about how to move forward.

Related stories

Most recent Utah stories

Related topics

UtahPolitics
Dennis Romboy

    STAY IN THE KNOW

    Get informative articles and interesting stories delivered to your inbox weekly. Subscribe to the KSL.com Trending 5.
    By subscribing, you acknowledge and agree to KSL.com's Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

    KSL Weather Forecast