The Trump administration took its case directly to U.S. governors that the pending Senate health care bill wouldn't hurt their residents with insurance, although critics say it would cut billions in funding and leave millions more people without coverage.
Governors gathered at their summer meeting in Providence, R.I., are trying to form a firm position on the measure to convey to Congress.
"You listen to one side, and they said, 'Your funding's not going to be decreased,"' said Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval, a Republican. "You listen to the other side, and you hear that you're going to lose hundreds of millions of dollars. As a governor, it's incumbent upon me to sort that out.''
Sandoval spoke after a closed-door session Saturday with Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price and Seema Verna, administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. "I have to be convinced that shaking that Etch A Sketch now for the people in Nevada, are they going to be in a better position?'' Sandoval said.
Sen. Dean Heller, a Nevada Republican up for re-election in 2018 in a state that Democrat Hillary Clinton won in the 2016 presidential election, is considered to hold a key vote on the bill.
Vice President Mike Pence spoke to the National Governors Association gathering and also lobbied governors privately on the bill on Friday.
The White House is attempting to win over governors, especially Republicans like Sandoval who expanded Medicaid in their states. They're concerned about cuts to Medicaid and what they see as shifting costs for the joint federal-state health-care program that provides coverage to the poor and elderly to the states.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wants a vote next week to replace President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act. The bill already has drawn two firm no votes from Republicans �� Rand Paul of Kentucky and Susan Collins of Maine �� leaving McConnell no margin for losing Republican support to get the 50 votes he needs. All Democrats are expected to vote against the measure.
Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, a Republican whose state expanded Medicaid, said he thinks the bill is improved from an earlier version, with $70 billion added to help stabilize health insurance exchanges and flexibility grants to states to help people transition from Medicaid to private insurance. While he's "open" to the bill, he's waiting for the final version.
"The bill that we're looking at today is probably not the bill that's actually going to be voted on," Hutchinson said. "Our job is to influence the direction of that and try to make the improvements that work for the states.''
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican and former presidential candidate, said he met with Pence and Price Friday but still hasn't taken a final position. "We're hopeful they're going to get to a point where they're going to have a repeal-and-replace that works,'' Walker said.
Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., a former governor, also spoke to governors in private and said he thinks the chance of the bill passing is a toss-up. He advocates hitting "the pause button" on the process that McConnell is keen to fast-forward, and said the input from governors "on the firing line" is important.
"We don't need a Democratic victory, we don't need a Republican victory here, we don't need a victory for the president," Carper said "We need a victory for our country and for 50 states, and the voices of the governors is critical.''
Pence, a former Indiana governor who expanded Medicaid in his state, acknowledged in Friday's speech the concerns that governors of both parties have raised about the cuts to Medicaid. He said that the Senate measure would restore Medicaid to its original purpose of helping the poor and disabled while giving states the flexibility to administer it properly.
Democratic governors scoffed. The Congressional Budget Office has said Medicaid funding in the previous version of the bill amounted to a cut of $772 billion from current projections over a decade.
"President Trump promised everybody gets covered, it will cost less money and you will get better results," said Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat and chairman of the National Governors Association. "None of that is in this bill."
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(Laura Litvan and Steven T. Dennis contributed to this report.)
