Speaker Paul Ryan is using health care policy as a way to lure two very different groups of lawmakers into supporting a stop-gap spending measure that will prevent a federal government shutdown.
He’s hoping Democrats will support the bill if it includes funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which ran out of funding on Oct. 1 and is currently subsisting on $2.85 billion of emergency spending that Congress appropriated to get it through March.
To woo the most conservative members of his own party into supporting the bill, Ryan has also included a provision to suspend the medical device tax, a part of the Affordable Care Act that has drawn bipartisan criticism, from conservatives as well as Democrats who represent areas where the medical device industry is significant. The tax was suspended for two years as part of a similar budget deal at the end of 2015, meaning that it is once again in effect this year.
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