speaking with business leaders in florida saying they are willing to make changes in the plan in areas of work requirements for able-bodied people and allowing block grants instead of the medicaid. the efforts to make it more appealing to some of the people who don t think it will work. the million dollar question or 1/5 of the economy, how do you produce a bill to satisfy the right, conservative group in the house, and pleases the moderates in the senate? those are worried about the medicaid expansion. that is gymnastics that none of the u.s. gymnasts were able to pull off. that is simone biles type of stuff. you got simone biles into the health care conversation. well done. the reality is you can t. the president is working hard trying to get some conservatives
in particular, he talked about the cohort. people who are potential trump supporters. rural, older americans who would get hit under the gop plan. we believe that we do need to ada did additional assistance. if a person in the 50s or 60s has additional health care costs, the tax credit adjusts for that. we agree. we believe we should have more assistance. that is one of the things we re looking at. it is interesting. they are hit by both sides. conservatives talking to steve bannon who want medicaid expansion to be rolled back more quickly. on the other side, aarp and people representing that cohort who want more generous benefits. they certainly are. one of the most interesting things in watching this push back to the plan to repeal obamacare is just that some of the most vocal voices are not from the left. they are from within the party. we saw this weekend, mike pence
phase out the medicaid expansion earlier. meanwhile, you have moderate republicans worried about the impact of medicaid changes on older low income americans. very people who helped get him to office. threading the needle is tricky. helping us break it down is eugene scott. good morning. what changes have to be made first to satisfy the conservative house members? before we get to the senate. one of the main things they are concerned about is the idea that funding could expand that would require government and taxpayers to put more money into the plan that they already think costs too much money. one of the criticisms from conservative lawmakers is the debt is already higher than they want and the way things are being proposed right now can only become more expensive. paul ryan over the weekend seemingly to nod to the age tax crowd. aarp movement. the demographic will get hit
pre-existing conditions and so forth. i think if they don t do this, it will preoccupy everybody. harris: the newspaper reporting today i mentioned it briefly that the goal is to give it to the house and senate and to get something on the president s desk by april. rather by easter. that s april 16th, that s relatively quickly. meghan: i think people like rand paul, these are purists, purest conservatives when it comes to political issues in the most intense sense i can possibly convey to you. part of this is just a fight a political ideology that they don t want medicaid expansion. that they ran in a certain way and made promises that their
attached to dollars and cents. that s what governor mcauliffe did. so at this point, it s sort of an open question whether the governor s line item will stand. but you re writing about another option that governor mcauliffe has in this situation, a possible public/private partnership to go forward with medicaid expansion. you say the governor could turn directly to the marketplace, invoking a republican-authored law in return for big profits operates a public program. that s how we got commuter express lanes added to the capital beltway and also toll finance tunnel linking port smith and norfolk. is that a real possibility? because one of the interesting things here is essentially the only people opposed to medicaid expansion are the republicans for ideological reason. all the interest group, the doctors, the insurers, the constituency groups. they all want medicaid expansion to go forward. well, keeping in mind that over the fours years of a mcauliffe governorship, nearly