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PresidentDonald Trump‘s surprising new push to repeal and replace theAffordable Care Act— a campaign pledge whose rollout proved poisonously unpopular with voters — was abandoned nearly just as quickly when he tweeted late Monday that any Republican plan would wait for a vote until“right after the Election”in 2020.
Ever the braggadocious salesman, the president in his Monday night tweets decried the Obama-era law as “really bad HealthCare!” and boasted that his party was “developing a really great HealthCare Plan with far lower premiums (cost) & deductibles than ObamaCare.”
He vowed such legislation would pass once Republicanswon back the House of Representativesnext fall.
Such messaging is at stark odds with reality: While conservatives have been united against Democratic health care legislation since before PresidentBarack Obama, they have not agreed on an alternative.
Though parts of the Affordable Care Act are unpopular with voters, some of its key reforms such as protections for patients with pre-existing conditions have been almost unanimously embraced. This has complicated Republican efforts at dismantling the law without a replacement offering similar guarantees — so far more vision than workable reality.
The closest repeal has comewas in 2017, but that effort narrowly failed to pass in the Senate after three Republicans voted against itin dramatic fashion.
Democrats campaigned on health care in the 2018 midterm elections, which they won decisively, returning them to power in the House. Immediately afterward, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said any future reforms to the law should be “on a bipartisan basis,”theWashington Postreported.
At the time, President Trump echoed McConnell’s more measured tone after years of Republican attacks on Obamacare.
“We want to do something on health care; they want to do something on health care,” Trump said then. “There are a lot of great things that we can do together.”
Politicoreported that“the new challenge to Obamacare follows a heated internal administration debate that began late last year.” According toPolitico, Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s acting chief of staff, “said that taking a bold stance would force Congress into repealing and replacing the law” — even though other cabinet officials opposed the move.
Trump has yet to offer specifics of his agreed-upon plan for a new health care law. On Tuesday his press secretary, Sarah Sanders, told reporters he “wants to work with Congress” on priorities including protections for pre-existing conditions, giving patients a voice and lowering costs.
“The Republican Party will become the Party of Great HealthCare!” Trump tweeted on Thursday.
Various Republican senators including Lindsey Graham and Mitt Romney said they were in “preliminary talks” on an Affordable Care Act replacement, according to Romney’s office,theDeseret Newsreported.
Meanwhile,one senator toldPolitico, “I want nothing to do with this.”
source: people.com
