Hoyer: Dems willing to work with GOP to ‘improve healthcare’

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Tuesday that Democrats are willing to work along side Republicans to make some “improvements” to the healthcare law.

“We are open to better solutions,” Hoyer told reporters Tuesday morning, one day before a scheduled House vote repealing the law. Democrats are expected to broadly vote against repeal.

Hoyer indicated some support for the broad goals of H.Res. 9, which instructs House committees to consider changes to the law and is the “replace” element in the Republicans' “repeal and replace” strategy.

The resolution calls on committees to come up with ways to ensure affordable care, cover people with pre-existing conditions and meet other goals.

The resolution is expected to come up for a vote on Thursday, after the Wednesday repeal vote.

“To the extent that Republicans come up with ideas that we think are improvements or are better we certainly look forward to working together on those issues,” Hoyer said. However, Hoyer did not name any specific items in the Republicans healthcare agenda he might instruct his caucus to pursue.

Democrats have said they agree with the Republican goal of eliminating the so-called 1099 language in the healthcare law, as most see this tax-reporting language as onerous. But Republicans and Democrats so far do not agree on how to kill this language, and reached a stalemate over whether to pay for the repeal of this section on the Senate floor in the last Congress.