total that flatlined their first effort. chief congressional correspondent mike emanuel tells us within the new plan what s realistic tonight. there s been a renewed push to get republican health care package passed in the house by the end of the week with the easter on the horizon. vice president mike pence, reince priebus, and budget director mick mulvaney have been reaching out to moderates and conservatives. the president and i remain confident that working with the congress, we will repeal and replace obamacare. with health care reform that will work for the american people and the american economy. paul ryan tried to lower expectations. i won t get into the details of them to say this is all about getting to the conceptual stage but we don t have bill text or an agreement yet. one offer made to conservatives would give states an opportunity to seek a waiver of obamacare regulations, including rules for guaranteed issue regardless of health status or age. essential healt
bringing both moderate republicans, as well as members of the house freedom caucus on the same page when it comes to a plan. the conversation from the white house is very much they re looking for a potential proposal that will weaken protections, allow states to opt out of essential health benefits under the health care law, which is to try and corral the house freedom caucus behind a piece of legislation. all of that, once again, will be a nonstarter of republican conference. it s hard to see there s a realistic effort to get to 216 votes. well, the reports we re getting right now. breaking news reports saying that the meeting just ended and that no text of any legislation was handed out, josh, to any of the people at that meeting. he s trying to say, there s nothing to talk about. i think rhinos you can only move one train on the tracks at one
tarbell.org. nice to have you with us. thank you, katy. let s talk about these changes we re hearing about. we don t know exactly what might be in the compromise we re considering, but we have some reporting. my colleague, benji sarlin reports, the bill they re looking at this moment anyway would enable states to request a waiver to drop the aca, the affordable care act s community ratings provision, which would allow insurers to charge sick people more for insurance than healthy people. it would also allow states to eliminate the package of ten essential health benefits that insurers right now are currently required to provide if their plans. can you explain a little bit of that to us? if that went through, what would change for those americans that are on obamacare? it would be really devastating. it would be tremendous for the insurance industry, in particular, the for-profit insurance companies like i used to work for, because they don t like community rating. and they don t
offer two things, the ability for states to opt out of the essential health benefits. ten floor items that need to be based on the affordable care act and give them an opportunity to opt out of the community ratings, which is a requirement that the insurance companies not be able to increase premiums based on age, gender or your health. these are two crucial components and two things that the freedom caucus has made very clear that they believe drives up premiums and is the reason health care has become too expensive and the proposal, the potential compromise put on the table as opposed to pulling them out entirely, which would not be acceptable to a lot of the moderate members, they ll give states the opportunity, kind of a federalism pathway that we could look at. here s the reality. while that s on the table, the freedom caucus has not accepted that compromise yet and this is a bigger problem to where we were 12 days ago. if you move the bill to the
90% of our conference was there. 10 parse w 10% was not. that s just where we are right now. with me now, cnn national politics reporter covering every step, m.j. lee. with regard to what s being offered to the house freedom caucus to maybe get them on the yes train, what is it and can it get them to the magic number of 2016? the conversations are focused between the white house led by vice president mike pence and then the freedom caucus members who didn t get on board the first time they tried to move this bill through the house. this is what we re hearing in terms of what is being offered to these conservative members. first, it s the option for states to opt out of covering the so-called essential health benefits. we know about this because we discussed this the first time around. we were talking about things like maternity care and