Republicans are ready to revive stalled health care legislation. Dems want the GOP to pay a price.

Politico

21-07-2025

He added: 'I also think it's a reminder of how [Republicans are] filing legislation to undo what they did three weeks ago. What's hilarious is they are either saying they didn't know what was in their own legislation or now they want to get away from what they voted for in their own legislation.'
Neal was referring to legislation from Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) that would roll back major changes to Medicaid — which he just voted for as part of the megabill.
There's been chatter for months about reviving a sweeping bipartisan health care package that was on track for passage last December as part of a larger government funding bill, but House GOP leaders dropped the health care provisions after Trump and Elon Musk said that funding bill was overly broad and threatened to tank it. A major part of the health package included proposals to crack down on PBMs, who critics accuse of charging higher prices for medications to health plans than the reimbursements they send to pharmacies, among other things.
As Smith alluded to, the Ways and Means Committee is also eyeing legislation from Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) for inclusion in the new health package. Kelly's bill, which was marked up and approved by the panel last summer, would allow weight loss drugs for treatment of obesity, like Wegovy and Zepbound, to qualify for Medicare coverage. Federal law currently bans Medicare from covering drugs for weight loss, even though Medicare covers pharmaceuticals for other conditions such as heart disease.
The drugs are expensive and a Biden administration plan to increase coverage of them, which Trump shelved in April, would have cost $25 billion over ten years, according to the agency that runs Medicare.
Another bill sponsored by Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) — which would reauthorize a partnership between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state health programs to offer free breast cancer screenings to low-income, uninsured and underinsured women — is also under consideration for that package.
But Democrats are furious with Republicans for first plowing through Medicaid changes in the megabill, then passing $9 billion in funding cuts across an array of federal programs, including those related to global health initiatives.
'If we keep making progress on [appropriations] … there is a chance we can do the health care package,' Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) said Thursday following the Senate's vote on Trump's rescissions request. 'But that chance got worse overnight.'
Coons has previously co-sponsored legislation with Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) to change how PBMs calculate health insurance deductibles. Marshall said last week that coming back to the table on bipartisan PBM legislation was 'a top priority.'
But Democrats are also pointing out that Republicans are looking at policies that would reduce drug costs, and expand federal health insurance coverage of drugs, right after they stripped hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid.