WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s notion of getting moderate Democrats to join with majority Republicans to help him win approval of health care legislation faces longshot odds, representatives of both parties said Tuesday.

In the wake of last week’s failed GOP effort to kill the Affordable Care Act, the Trump administration has indicated it could likely get a revised bill passed on a second try with support from just a few Democrats who are concerned with the present law.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said Monday the president and his aides have received calls from unnamed Democrats offering to work with the administration.

The two top Democratic leaders in Congress — Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York and Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California — said they are willing to try to find common ground but only if the president stops trying to repeal the existing law, also known as Obamacare.

Schumer said there are elements of the law that need fixing, including the cost of health insurance for middle-class Americans. Pelosi said support of Democrats depends on “first do no harm” in any proposed changes to the law.

Trump’s effort last week to win approval of the Republican replacement bill for Obamacare collapsed when hard-right conservatives and some centrist Republicans objected to the measure. Speaker Paul Ryan decided against a House showdown on the bill because he didn’t have the 216 votes needed for passage.

In the aftermath, Republican leaders appeared more interested in bridging the divide in their party instead of working with Democrats on health care legislation.

They held a closed door meeting to determine what to do next. And one member of the conservative Freedom Caucus that helped scuttle the bill, Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Alabama, said he didn’t know if Republicans could come together. “It depends on if they take a good path or a bad path,” he said in an interview.

A bad path would be like the Republican bill, he said. It would not really repeal the Affordable Care Act, but replace it with what he termed a “Republican welfare bill” leaving in place federal health care subsidies and the requirement insurers cover preexisting conditions, a feature that increases the cost of insurance.

Asked about moderates who want to preserve those aspects of the health care law, Brooks, said: “If the American people want a repeal of Obamacare, then they need to start electing Republicans who will repeal Obamacare.”

Brooks said about 40 percent of the 30-member Freedom Caucus were willing to vote for the Republican plan last week, a higher number than had been reported previously.

Following their meeting, some Republicans were still resentful of factions in their party that prevented approval of the GOP health care plan.

“Some accomplished what they set out to accomplish, which was nothing but than to get a lot of face time on TV,” said Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., who supported the bill.

“There’s a lot more to governing than just saying no,” he added.

Ryan and other Republican leaders, however, appeared more optimistic Republicans could come together. He made no mention of working with Democrats, saying he’s encouraged some Republicans who had opposed the measure last week now indicate they want to support it.

“I don’t want to become a factionalized majority. I want us to become a unified majority,” Ryan told reporters. “That means we’re going to talk things out until we get there. We’re going to work together until we get this right.”

Ryan declined to give a timeline for when House Republicans will try to vote again on the bill. He acknowledged insurance companies would like to know what Congress is going to do.

Insurers have to decide by June whether they will continue selling insurance to individuals in the Affordable Care Act marketplace next year.

The decision is particularly important in counties where there is only one insurance company. The entire state of Oklahoma, for instance, has only one marketplace insurer, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Oklahoma.

State insurance commissioner John Doak said in an interview he remains “cautiously optimistic” the insurer will continue providing insurance to about 140,000 individuals.

Kristen Cunningham, spokeswoman for the Oklahoma insurer’s parent company, the Health Care Service Corporation, said no final decisions have been made about next year. She said they are waiting to see what Congress does with health care.

But Rep. Tom Massie, R-Ky., said, “it’s fantasy a single Democrat will support repealing Barack Obama’s legacy law.”

Massie, a conservative who is not a member of the Freedom Caucus, tweeted last week he would vote “hell no” on the Republican bill because it didn’t really repeal Obamacare, a condition for his support.

That sentiment was echoed by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. “We promised we will repeal and replace Obamacare and that’s exactly what we will do,” he said.

But Rep. Dave Loebsack, D-Iowa, a member of the Energy and Commerce committee that deals with some aspects of the health care bill, agreed Democrats have no interest in repealing the Affordable Care Act.

“The American people don’t want us to repeal the law,” he said. “They want us to fix it,” noting that the Republican health care bill had only 17 percent support in a recent national poll by Quinnipiac University.

Kery Murakami is CNHI’s Washington reporter. Contact him at kmurakami@cnhi.com.