Overnight Healthcare: McConnell throws cold water on reviving ObamaCare repeal | House GOP insists they aren’t giving up | Price faces new task of overseeing health law

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Tuesday that ObamaCare will stay put, sounding resigned to the law continuing even as the House tries to revive repeal efforts.

“It’s pretty obvious we were not able in the House to pass a replacement,” McConnell told reporters. “Our Democratic friends ought to be pretty happy about that because we have the existing law in place and I think we’re just going to have to see how that works out.

“We believe it will not work out well, but we’ll see. They have an opportunity now to have the status quo go forward, regretfully,” he added.

House Republican leaders said Tuesday that they are not giving up on the repeal effort. But the Senate was wary of the previous legislation from the start, and McConnell spoke of the effort in the past tense. Read more here. http://bit.ly/2nsc4vo  

House GOP insists: We’re not giving up on ObamaCare repeal

House Republicans on Tuesday said they are not giving up on their effort to repeal ObamaCare despite the failure of their replacement bill last week.

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said lawmakers will keep trying to find a path forward on repeal and replacement even while moving on to other issues in the short term.

“We’re going to get this right, and in the meantime we’re going to do all of our other work that we came here to do,” he told reporters Tuesday.

Any repeal and replacement effort faces long odds. House Republicans were unable to come together last week, and leaders had to pull the bill from consideration in a major defeat. It is unclear what could change to allow the policy differences in the conference to be bridged.

Read more here: http://bit.ly/2mNCxWU

Top House Republicans favor funding key ObamaCare payments

Key House Republicans on healthcare say they want to find a way to fund ObamaCare payments that they previously sued the Obama administration over.

The payments, known as cost-sharing reductions, reimburse insurers for providing discounted deductibles for low-income ObamaCare enrollees. If the payments were canceled, insurers warn they could pull out of the market because of the hole left in their budgets, causing chaos.

GOP lawmakers previously filed suit against the Obama White House over the payments, arguing they were being made unconstitutionally, without a congressional appropriation.

Now, after last week’s failure of the House GOP’s ObamaCare replacement bill, top Republicans say they realize they need to fund the payments. Providing that funding would go a long way to stabilizing the market and removing a major source of insurer anxiety, though other problems would of course remain.  

Read more here: http://bit.ly/2nJLgJ3

Ryan: Don’t tie Planned Parenthood to government funding fight

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) says lawmakers shouldn’t try to defund Planned Parenthood in a measure to fund the government.

“We think reconciliation is the tool, because that gets it into law,” Ryan told reporters Tuesday.

Funding for the government expires on April 28. Conservatives are pushing for cuts to federal spending and want to block funding for Planned Parenthood.

Read more from The Hill’s Sylvan Lane here: http://bit.ly/2o8hHCd

Price faces unwanted task of administering ObamaCare

Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price came into office last month ready to lead the charge on repealing ObamaCare. Now, that effort has run into a brick wall, leaving him to oversee a law he fiercely opposes.

President Trump last week predicted that ObamaCare “soon will explode,” stirring speculation that the administration could seek to undermine the law.

Yet there are also signs that Price and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will take a more pragmatic approach.

Read more here: http://bit.ly/2nJxmXt

What we’re reading

Executive order lays out blueprint for Trump opioid commission (Stat News)

In health bill’s defeat, Medicaid comes of age (The New York Times)

Justice Department joins lawsuit alleging massive Medicare fraud by UnitedHealth (Kaiser Health News)

State by state

Lawmakers in deep-red Kansas just voted to expand Medicaid (The Washington Post)

Virginia governor renews push to expand Medicaid (WVTF)

Georgia governor says state will explore Medicaid changes (ABC)

In case you missed it

Freedom Caucus member tries to force ObamaCare repeal vote

McCaskill investigating opioid producers

Maine gov: Letting ObamaCare fail like telling people to ‘jump off a bridge’

Trump speech guest of honor rips NIH budget cuts

Ann Romney: I’ll be first to lobby against Trump’s cuts to NIH