U.S. Rep. Glenn Thompson, R-Howard Township, on Friday called on House leadership to keep representatives in Washington, D.C. for the month of August and continue working on a health care bill.
The House would normally be in recess for the month of August with representatives returning to work in their home districts. But Thompson took the floor to call for members to use that time draft a new health care bill through committees.
‘I rise to call upon the House leadership to not adjourn until we have a health care bill,’ Thompson said in remarks directed to Speaker Paul Ryan. ‘Respective committees need to meet and walk a new product through regular order.’
The call came hours after the Senate’s attempt at a partial ‘skinny repeal’ of the Affordable Care Act failed to pass, with three Republican senators — Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins and John McCain — joining all Democrats in voting against it.
In May, the House passed its own health care replacement bill, the American Health Care Act, for which Thompson ultimately voted in favor. But that bill as written stood little chance of making it through the Senate.
The failed ‘skinny repeal’ in the Senate would have repealed individual mandates and eliminated employer mandates. It also would have defunded Planned Parenthood and provided more funds to community health centers; eliminated support for the Centers for Disease Control Prevention and Public Health Fund; and given states a waiver process for certain regulations.
‘We know what will and will not work, given the voting prerogatives of the members of this body and the Senate,’ Thompson said. ‘We understand the needs of our constituents, regardless of their voter registration… We understand it is our job to navigate the complexities of this issue on behalf of the American people and come up with a product that makes good on promises that have been made to improve our health care system.’
Thompson added that it will take a bipartisan effort to draft a new plan for ‘what has unfortunately become a partisan issue.’
Pennsylvania’s Republican senator, Pat Toomey, supported the Senate effort and expressed disappointment that it failed to pass as the senators voted overnight Thursday into Friday.
‘I am disappointed with this setback on efforts to fix our broken health care system,’ Toomey said in a statement. ‘For the hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians suffering from the higher costs and fewer choices caused by Obamacare’s collapse, Congress must not give up on repealing and replacing the failed health care law.’
The state’s Democratic senator, Bob Casey, has been a fierce critic of both versions of a health care bill that have been drafted in the Senate.
‘The Senate Republican health care plan was a terrible bill for the middle class and that’s why it was rejected on a bipartisan basis,’ Casey wrote on Twitter early Friday morning. ‘It’s now time for us to work together on commonsense solutions that will make our health care system more affordable and bring down costs.’
It’s now time for us to work together on commonsense solutions that will make our health care system more affordable and bring down costs.
— Senator Bob Casey (@SenBobCasey) July 28, 2017
