“It is a little bit of a surprise to me,” Doherty added. “Health reform is so difficult. Getting people who take care of people engaged in the process and not actively opposed would seem to be smart policy as well as politically.”
The health-care industry wants to protect coverage by preserving a Medicaid expansion instituted under Obamacare. Insurers have also called for increasing the financial help offered in the bill to Americans buying insurance in the individual market.
As chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Greg Walden of Oregon was one of the bill’s prime authors. He said he and his team regularly talk to industry players, but they didn’t want to rely on people who supported Obamacare.
‘Different View’
"I spent a lot of time with the hospital association people," he said, offering one example. "You know, they got a different view. But obviously the Medicaid cuts, and all of that, we talk to them about."
Roe said, "The whole idea was not to come up with Obamacare again."
A lobbyist for hospitals, who asked to remain anonymous, confirmed meeting with Walden though not with House leaders. When the bill text came out in early March, the details were a surprise, the lobbyist added.
America’s Health Insurance Plans, the insurers’ main lobby group, had also been working for months to sway lawmakers on the Obamacare replacement, but it also didn’t see the bill before it was released to the public, a person familiar with the group’s strategy said.
Indeed, the bill was kept away from most Republican lawmakers before its release, prompting the spectacle of Senator Rand Paul, a Republican skeptic of the House plan, searching Capitol rooms for the bill with a trail of reporters following him.
‘Haphazardly Constructed’