- Budget Committee OKs Obamacare Repeal Over Objections from Conservatives USA Today by Eliza Collins—The House bill to repeal and replace Obamacare moved one step forward Thursday with a narrow victory in the House Budget Committee despite three Republican members voting against the legislation. The committee voted 19-17 to move the legislation forward. No Democrats voted for it. Reps. Dave Brat, R-Va., Mark Sanford, R-S.C., and Gary Palmer, R-Ala., joined Democrats and voted against moving the legislation forward. The three lawmakers are all members of the House Freedom Caucus, a group of roughly 40 hardline conservatives who have criticized the bill in its current form, mostly on the grounds that it does not go far enough in repealing Obamacare and does not do so quickly enough.
- Health Bill Short of Votes, GOP Leaders Look to Trump AP by Erica Werner and Alan Fram—Short of votes for their health care bill, Republican congressional leaders turned to President Donald Trump on Thursday to wrangle support for the divisive legislation they hope to push through Congress before Easter. But Trump sounded more like he was at the start of a negotiation than ready to close the deal. And combined with opposition from Republicans of all stripes, the president's flexible stance suggested final passage of the bill could be delayed, potentially exposing the legislation to the same kind of extended public backlash that undermined former President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act from the start.
- Trump Administration Shifts Away from 'Insurance For Everybody' Los Angeles Times by Noah Bierman—The White House shifted away from President Trump's stated goal of providing "insurance for everybody" on Tuesday, instead promising that the House GOP plan to repeal and replace Obamacare offers "more people the option to get health care." The altered tone from Press Secretary Sean Spicer comes as the bill faces new scrutiny.
- G.O.P. Senators Suggest Changes for Health Care Bill Offered by House New York Times by Jennifer Steinhauer and Thomas Kaplan—A day after a harsh judgment by the CBO on the House plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act, nervous Senate Republicans on Tuesday suggested changes to the bill. They told Trump administration officials—including the health secretary, Tom Price—that they wanted to see lower insurance costs for poorer, older Americans and an increase in funding for states with high populations of hard-to-insure people.