Hatch, Lee tight-lipped after meeting with Trump on health care bill

By Dennis Romboy

Deseret News

SALT LAKE CITY - Utah's two senators and 13 of their Republican colleagues sat down with President Donald Trump on Tuesday about efforts to replace the Affordable Care Act but were tight-lipped about the meeting afterward.

Sens. Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee, both R-Utah, have key roles in rewriting the contentious law - Hatch as Senate Finance Committee chairman and Lee as a member of Senate Republicans' working group on health care. Hatch has held several meetings with Utahns about what they would want in the bill.

GOP senators are drafting their own plan - with Hatch and his staff taking the lead while working with Senate leadership and the Trump administration - rather than moving on legislation the House passed last month. Disagreements between conservatives and moderates have slowed progress on the bill.

A Hatch spokesman said the senator appreciated the president having him and the group of senators at the White House but wouldn't talk about details from the lunch meeting.

"There was a robust discussion involving the Senate's current work to rescue the American people from the failures of Obamacare," said Hatch spokesman Matt Whitlock.

"As this was a private lunch, the senator prefers to leave the specifics of the discussion private, but nonetheless was very pleased at the opportunity to meet with the president and discuss this critical issue."

The Associated Press reported that Trump told the Republican senators that the House-passed health care bill is "mean" and urged them to craft a version that is "more generous," citing unidentified congressional sources.

The sources say the president did not specify what aspects of the bill he was characterizing.

Trump told reporters after the meeting that the Senate would come out with a "real bill, not Obamacare."

"The House has passed a bill and now the Senate is working very, very hard, and specifically the folks in this room, and I really appreciate what you're doing to come out with a bill that's going to be a phenomenal bill for the people of our country," Trump told reporters. "Generous, kind, with heart. That's what I'm saying. And that may be adding additional money into it."

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected that under the House plan, 23 million more Americans would be uninsured over a decade.

Lee said it was an honor to discuss health care reform with the president, and "I hope we will be able to find a solution that will lower premiums for Utahns."

Last month, Lee said the House bill contains numerous fatal procedural flaws and would have to be rewritten.

"In fact, it will probably have to be re-envisioned entirely," he said.

Trump's remarks were a surprising critique of a Republican-written House measure whose passage he lobbied for and praised, according to the Associated Press. At a Rose Garden ceremony minutes after the bill's narrow House passage, Trump called it "a great plan."

His comments also seemed to undercut efforts by Senate conservatives to include restrictions in their chamber's bill, such as cutting the Medicaid health care program for the poor and limiting the services insurers must cover. Moderate GOP senators have been pushing to ease those efforts.

Meantime, Democrats are criticizing GOP senators for crafting their bill in private without public hearings.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., tweeted Tuesday that Senate Republicans "are trying to hide their monstrous #Trumpcare bill." Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., accused his Senate colleagues of "trying to sneak a major bill through Congress."

Republican Senate leadership is targeting a vote before the July 4 recess.

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Credit: By Dennis Romboy Deseret News