Some lawmakers now look to bipartisanship on health care

But Mr. Priebus’s softer vision gave some in Congress hope that a bipartisan approach could be found — possibly to alleviate the health law’s burdens on small business, repeal some of its more unpopular taxes, give employers more leeway on which employees they have to offer insurance to, and foster more competition among insurance companies. “I believe that there is a group of centrist Democrats who recognize that the Affordable Care Act has flaws that must be fixed,” Ms. Collins said. “Until there was a repudiation of the House bill, they felt constrained from negotiating. Now that the House bill has died, I hope they will feel free to come to the table.”

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Representative Don Young, Republican of Alaska, also called for bipartisanship. His state has benefited from its expansion of Medicaid under the health law, and would have been punished under the House Republican bill because its high premium costs would not have been offset by larger tax credits, as they are under current law.

“The reason why Obamacare failed was because it wasn’t a bipartisan bill,” Mr. Young said. Republicans, he said, made the same mistake, writing their bill without Democrats. “We were very frankly guilty of that,” he said…

“Until now, we haven’t talked at all about compromise on the Affordable Care Act,” said Representative Diana DeGette, Democrat of Colorado. “From the moment it passed, Republicans started their mantra of ‘repeal and replace.’ Now that repeal seems to be off the table, I think it’s in everybody’s interest to make the law work better for our constituents.”

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