text: poster="https://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201705/3949/1155968404_5420376308001_5420366772001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true Upton, Long reverse themselves and back Obamacare repeal bill GOP leaders are tweaking the bill to lure resistant House members as the White House pushes for a vote as soon as Thursday. 
   
   Two prominent Republican opponents of the House GOP’s Obamacare repeal bill reversed course and backed the measure Wednesday morning, after negotiating a last-minute amendment with President Donald Trump at the White House. 
   
   Reps. Fred Upton of Michigan and Billy Long of Missouri, whose defections this week rattled rank-and-file Republicans, emerged from their session with the president and said an amendment to add $8 billion to help cover people with pre-existing conditions would return them to the "yes" column on the bill. 
   
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   Though there were concerns the revised measure might repel conservatives already reluctant to back the GOP plan, early signals suggested most would remain on board. 
   
   "I believe they will find broad support among [House Freedom Caucus] members for their amendment," said caucus Chairman Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) in a statement to POLITICO. 
   
   Some White House officials want a vote on the bill quickly, and House Republican leaders are warning Democrats that the bill might come up for a vote as early as Thursday. Two senior White House officials said they feared members leaving for recess without voting could doom eventual passage, but many in Congress have grown frustrated with the White House's timetables. 
   
   Upton, the former chairman of the House energy and commerce committee and author of several Obamacare repeal bills, had declared Tuesday that the House plan fell short of GOP promises to protect people with preexisting conditions. His opposition threatened to derail delicate last-minute negotiations to pass the legislation, known as the American Health Care Act. Long, a staunch Trump ally, also threatened to scramble the GOP whip count. 
   
   After the White House meeting, Long told reporters at first he resisted pressure from Trump to support the bill. 
   
   “We need you, we need you, we need you,” Long said Trump told him in phone calls on Tuesday. “I said, ‘I’m a no' and I stayed a no. I said, ‘Fred Upton and I have been working on some language, if we can get [it] in there, it can get us both in a position we need to be on pre-existing conditions and make sure those people are covered. Because they need to be covered. Period.’” 
   
   Even as he switched his position, Upton expressed caution, noting that the measure will almost certainly not become law in its current form. 
   
   “This bill will change from where it is today" once the Senate takes it up, Upton said. 
   
   The last-minute talks appeared to pay dividends with some fence-sitting moderates in the House. Shortly after Upton and Long's White House visit, Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.) said in a statement that if House leaders "work to tighten" protections for people with preexisting conditions, he would support the bill. A spokeswoman Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.) said the congressman would "review" the amendment to see whether it addressed his concerns with earlier versions of the bill. 
   
   The White House now feels as though they are on the precipice of passage, an administration official said after the announcement. A vote isn’t necessarily vital this week, the official said, but would be “preferable.” 
   
   Early Wednesday, the White House began to lean on House leadership to call a vote on the measure — known as the American Health Care Act — this week. 
   
   "If I were the speaker of the House, and I'm not — and by the way I'm thankful that I'm not, it's a miserable job — I’d probably go to the floor because it’s just that close," said Trump's budget director Mick Mulvaney, during an appearance on "Fox & Friends." 
   
   Similar comments have irked House leaders in the past because they're conducting a delicate whip operation to try to corral hesitant colleagues. And despite Mulvaney's pronouncement, House Speaker Paul Ryan declined to commit to holding a vote when asked Wednesday morning. He said the House leaders were "extremely close" to securing enough support to pass the AHCA. 
   
   But leaders seemed cautiously optimistic they had struck the right balance. 
   
   "I think we have a solution that addresses some of their concerns, gives us the ability to bring more people into the yes column without losing any of our current yes votes," said Majority Whip Steve Scalise on Fox News on Wednesday morning. 
   
   GOP leaders can only afford to lose 22 votes and still pass the bill. Already about 20 lawmakers, mostly moderates concerned about the bill's impact on constituents, have said publicly they will vote "no." Even more have said they're undecided and have yet to make up their minds. 
   
   Trump is pouring a lot of political capital into the latest effort to pass the bill. The president made at least a dozen phone calls seeking support for the bill Tuesday. 
   
   The White House is hoping changes to the bill will win over wary moderates, and they're crossing their fingers that Trump can secure an endorsement from those opponents after his meeting with lawmakers Wednesday. 
   
   Jennifer Haberkorn, Burgess Everett and Matthew Nussbaum contributed to this report. ||||| Rep. Upton: Health bill 'likely now to pass' in the House 6:23 PM ET Wed, 3 May 2017 | 01:12 
   
   The Republican effort to replace Obamacare got a much-needed boost Wednesday when two congressmen agreed after meeting with President Donald Trump to drop their opposition to the GOP bill and vote for it. 
   
   Reps. Billy Long and Fred Upton said they are now "yes" votes on the bill because of the addition of an amendment that will add $8 billion in federal funding to reduce insurance costs for people with pre-existing health conditions. 
   
   "I think it [the bill] is likely now to pass in the House," Upton told reporters at the White House after meeting with Trump. 
   
   Long, R-Mo., and Upton, R-Mich., earlier this week said they would oppose the bill because it could harm people with pre-existing conditions by allowing states to win waivers for insurers who wanted to charge such customers higher premiums under certain conditions. 
   
   Bloomberg reported that a White House official said the GOP is still two or three votes away from being able to ensure the bill would pass the House. 
   
   Republican leaders have said they won't call for a vote until they know it will pass. 
   
   Leslie Dach, director of the Obamacare-supporting group Protect Our Care Campaign, said the amendment that swayed Upton and Long is "nothing more than a bailout for House Republicans as their latest desperate attempts to repeal health care continue to face strong public opposition." 
   
   "This possible amendment doesn't change the underlying truth of the Republican health-care repeal — it guts protections for people with pre-existing conditions. The GOP plan requires people with pre-existing conditions to get special insurance that costs more and covers less," Dach said. 
   
   
   
   "Now they think they can fix it by handing $62 per person to the estimated 129 million people with pre-existing conditions in this country? It isn't a solution, it's an insult," he said. "The health-care repeal will cut coverage from millions, raise your premiums and eliminate your protections, and nothing they are proposing changes those facts." 
   
   A Politico/Morning Consult poll released Wednesday found that 50 percent of Americans oppose allowing states to opt out of requiring that insurers cover pre-existing conditions. Another 38 percent support the idea of that. 
   
   And nearly 60 percent of poll respondents said that Congress should wait for the Congressional Budget Office to analyze the revised bill before voting on it. A CBO study of a past version of the bill found that it would lead to 24 million more people becoming uninsured over the next decade, and sharp premium hikes over the next two years for individual health plans. 
   
   Watch: Health care breakout?
target: – Two Republican representatives who announced earlier this week they wouldn't support the GOP bill to repeal and replace ObamaCare have done a 180, giving new hope to the American Health Care Act, the Hill reports. Fred Upton of Michigan and Billy Long of Missouri switched to "yes" votes after meeting with President Trump on Wednesday and successfully adding an amendment to the AHCA. According to Politico, the amendment puts $8 billion in federal funding toward helping people with pre-existing conditions get insurance. "They need to be covered. Period," Long says he told Trump. Upton says he thinks the AHCA now has enough votes to pass the House. With the addition of Upton's amendment, at least two other Republican representatives say they'll consider voting for the bill. There was some concern Upton's amendment would scare off the more conservative members of the House, but that doesn't appear to have been the case. Upton says a House vote on the AHCA is possible as soon as Thursday. CNBC reports one ObamaCare advocate says Upton's amendment won't actually do anything to help people with pre-existing conditions afford the increased cost of insurance under the AHCA; it amounts to an extra $62 for each American with a pre-existing condition.