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Wisconsin Republicans worrythat a crowded Senate primary could make it harder for them to beatDemocratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin.

Republicans feel that Baldwin is vulnerable President Donald Trump became the first Republican to win Wisconsin since Ronald Reagan in 1984. And Republican Sen. Ron Johnsonalso won re-election against former Sen. Russ Feingoldlast year in a rematch of their 2010 Senate race.

But Republicans worry that they might make the same mistake they made in 2012 when too many candidatesweakened eventual nominee former Gov. Tommy Thompson against Baldwin, The Associated Press reported.

You talk to the grassroots and theyre still riding high from the last election, Brian Westrate, chairman of the Wisconsins 3rd Congressional District Republican Party told the AP. Those of us who have seen the sausage get made a lot of times are pragmatically concerned about the Senate race.

Westrate saidhe would feel better if there was a generally agreed-upon candidatebut instead, there at leastfour Republicans are making movesto get into the race, including millionairesEric Hovde and Nicole Schneider, andKevin Nicholson, backed bymega donorRichard Uihlein, and at least four others being recruited or thinking about it.

Any one of them could be a fine candidate, Westrate told the AP. Its just unfortunate as it stands now there isnt any one of them. Theres six of them.

Meanwhile, theincumbenthas already raised $2.2 million in the first quarter of 2017 and has $2.4 million in cash on hand.

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Republicans Concerned About Crowded Primary Against Baldwin - Roll Call

The Hill

Republicans ponder possible defeat in red Georgia Sacramento Bee Republican anxiety is mounting about a runoff election in a typically red Georgia House districta race that will offer an early test of Democratic motivation just weeks after Donald Trump's health care repeal bill passed the House. Republicans in ... Ga. special election Republican accuses Dem of voter registration 'trick'The Hill all 10 news articles »

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Republicans ponder possible defeat in red Georgia - Sacramento Bee

Ad will collapse in seconds CLOSE May 8, 2017 05/08/2017 12:44 pm By Jonathan Chait Share Republicans celebrate the House passage of Trumpcare. Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Last week, after a nearly all-male group of Republicans celebrated the passage of a House bill that would, they boast, enable men to stop having to pay for womens health care, and as a completely male Senate Republican working group gets to work on the upper chambers bill, a Republican aide told CNN that gender is a nonissue: We have no interest in playing the games of identity politics, thats not what this is about; its about getting a job done. Just a bunch of gender-neutral human beings making gender-neutral decisions about public policy!

Except there happens to be the coincidental factor that the policy in question is inextricably linked to gender. The health-care debate revolves around whether, and to what degree, the medically and economically fortunate should have to subsidize the medically and economically unfortunate. Women have, on average, higher lifetime medical costs than men, which means a market-based insurance system, where every individual plan is priced based on that persons expected medical costs, will charge women on average higher premiums.

Republicans have been dancing around this implication for years with their argument that people who dont need prenatal care should not have to buy insurance that covers it. (This means, of course, that the costs of prenatal care would be borne entirely by those who do need it, i.e., women of childbearing age.) National Review columnist Kevin Williamson comes right out and makes the case that charging women higher rates for insurance is the natural order of things. Why Shouldnt Women Pay More for Health Insurance? asks his headline. Williamsons answer turns out to be Science:

Its worth noting that the vast majority of American health insurance operates on the principle of gender parity. If you get standard employer-based insurance, then your firm divides the cost of insurance among employees without regard to gender. Likewise, Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA are financed without regard to fact that women absorb more medical care. We certainly could change those systems to reflect actuarial science. Employer insurance could charge female employees higher premiums and deductibles than male ones, and Medicare could change its financing so that women pay more than men. Oddly, nobody not even Williamson is proposing these changes. The non-group insurance market is the only segment of American health care in which anybody proposes to make women pay proportionately more.

Conservatives have made all kinds of practical arguments for the Republican health-care bill. They have made a smattering of moral arguments, too, such as the principle that people with more expensive medical needs have failed to make healthy choices and deserve financial punishment for their failings. What is telling about the gender debate is that it lacks even the pretext of personal responsibility. There is no case to be made that women ought to pay more for insurance because they chose to be female. There is no principle at all except that people who have more ought to keep it.

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Why Republicans Want to Make Women Pay More Than Men for Health Insurance - New York Magazine

House Republican leaders have set a Thursday vote on a bill that would repeal and replace ObamaCare, they announced Wednesday.

The vote announcement indicates that the GOP has enough votes to pass the so-called American Health Care Act (AHCA) and send the measure to the Senate for consideration. Republican leaders had spent several daysscrambling to round up the votes.

"We're gonna pass it," House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., told Fox News, adding that the bill had the support of the required 216 members to pass out of the chamber.

The bill's passage would mark the culmination of seven years' worth of promises by Republicans to undo Obama's signature legislative achievement andand provide a long-sought win for President Donald Trump, who has been in office more than 100 days without a significant congressional victory save Senate confirmation of a Supreme Court justice.

The latest iteration of the GOP bill would let states escape a current requirement that insurers charge healthy and seriously ill customers the same rates, a measure that has drawn the ire of some moderate Republicans.

However, a pair of moderates flipped their position earlier Wednesday and announced they were supporting the legislation after winning Trump's backing for their amendment to the measure.

The proposal by Reps. Fred Upton, R-Mich. and and Billy Long, R-Mo., would provide $8 billion over five years to help some people with pre-existing medical conditions afford coverage. Upton said their plan would put "downward pressure" on premium costs.

Upton's conversion was especially significant because he's a respected, centrist voice on health issues and former chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Upton and Long were among four House members who met with Trump at the White House. Also attending the White House meeting were the current Energy and Commerce chairman, Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., and Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas, who heads a health subcommittee.

"Today we're here announcing that with this addition that we brought to the president, and sold him on in over an hour meeting in here with him, that we're both yesses on the bill," Long told reporters at the White House.

"'We need you, we need you, we need you,"' Long described as the message from Trump.

Democrats remained solidly opposed to the legislation.The American Medical Association, AARP and other consumer and medical groups are also opposed. The AMA issued a statement saying Upton's changes "tinker at the edges without remedying the fundamental failing of the bill - that millions of Americans will lose their health insurance as a direct result."

Late Wednesday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., slammed Republicans' decision to proceed with a vote before the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) had scored the bill for expected drops in the number of insured Americans.

"Forcing a vote without a CBO score shows that Republicans are terrified of the public learning the full consequences of their plan to push Americans with pre-existing conditions into the cold," Pelosi said. "But tomorrow, House Republicans are going to tattoo this moral monstrosity to their foreheads, and the American people will hold them accountable."

The overall bill would cut Medicaid, repeal tax boosts on higher-earning people, eliminate Obama's fines on people who don't buy insurance and give many of them smaller federal subsidies.

Before the White House meeting, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., praised the proposal and said the GOP was getting "extremely close" to finally being able to pass the stalled legislation.

The proposal "is something that nobody has a problem with, and it's actually helping" round up support for the bill, Ryan said on radio's "The Hugh Hewitt Show."

The existing health care measure would let states get federal waivers allowing insurers to charge higher premiums to people with pre-existing illnesses who'd let their coverage lapse. To get the waiver, the state must have a high-risk pool or another mechanism to help such people afford a policy.

Opponents said that would effectively deny such people coverage by letting insurers charge them unaffordable prices. They say high-risk pools have a mixed record because government money financing them often proves inadequate.

The money in Upton's plan would help people with pre-existing illnesses pay premiums in states where insurers can charge them more.

There's already around $130 billion in the legislation states could use to help people afford insurance, but critics have said that's just a fraction of what would be needed for adequate coverage.

Fox News' Chad Pergram and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

Original post:
House Republicans set Thursday vote on health care bill

Tonight's decision comes after the party has spent weeks tweaking the bill to attract wavering members. Combine the risk involved with the level of public sausage-making and a simple question arises: Why?

After all, it's clear that threading the needle between the House Freedom Caucus on the ideological right and the Tuesday Group in the center is a perilous proposition. Republicans have already swung and missed twice. Even with the current momentum behind Michigan Rep. Fred Upton's amendment to fund state-based high-risk pools as a fix for the decision to waive the federal mandate on covering people with pre-existing conditions, it's going to be a very, very close vote -- if there is a vote at all.

I've talked to a handful of Republican members and senior campaign staffers about just that question. While they recognize voting on a bill with an uncertain legislative future is a risk, they think the bigger risk is not passing anything at all. There are two main reasons behind that thinking:

1. Repealing and replacing Obamacare -- which is not exactly what they will be doing, but whatever -- was the issue Republicans built their entire message around over the last 7+ years. The promise they made to their base was that if they were voted into power, the bill would be gone. It's on the back of that message that they won control of the House in 2010 and the Senate in 2014. It played a major role in pushing Trump over the top against Hillary Clinton too.

Given the centrality of health care to everything Republicans have talked about over the last seven years, to simply throw up their hands and give up is unthinkable. GOP strategists believe deeply that to walk away from health care would cause a revolt -- or at least a major enthusiasm dip -- within their base. And, with the Democratic base fired up beyond belief to send a message to Trump, the 2018 midterms could be a total disaster.

2. The country is looking to Republicans to show they can actually govern. Not just protest the policies of the Obama Administration, but actually govern. At the moment -- and it is, granted, quite early -- the scorecard doesn't look very good. Tax reform is a long process that has only just begun. Building Trump's much-promised border wall will be a long and arduous process -- if it happens at all.

Republican members of Congress need something tangible to take to their constituents come August recess. They need to be able to point to a major piece of legislation that they promised they would deliver and show that they made good on their end of the bargain. (Obviously this argument gets complicated if the Senate either doesn't act on a House-passed measure or amends it heavily.) Health care, which is of critical importance to the Republican base (see above), would have that effect, they believe.

That's why Republicans are pushing all their chips into the middle on this. The only other option is to go bust.

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Here's why Republicans are willing to roll the dice on ...