Liz to prez: You’re trying to make Obamacare fail
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren said President Trump can’t simply place the troubled future of Obamacare at Democrats’ feet after he sought to sabotage its success and “actively worked” to make it “fail” from his first days in the Oval Office.
“Let’s be real clear: We are not talking about if nothing is done,” Warren said. “Donald Trump has already actively worked to try to make Obamacare fail. That has been his goal.”
Trump took his legislative lumps yesterday afternoon after House Speaker Paul Ryan pulled the doomed GOP’s repeal-and-replace of Obamacare before a vote was called. The president said he is moving on, and he added the 2010 health care law is now the Democrats’ problem.
Warren said there’s a lot Trump can do to tank Obamacare — pointing out that within his first week in office his administration slashed Obamacare signup outreach at a crucial time before deadlines.
“What this is going to come down to is: What’s your real goal, Donald Trump?” Warren asked.
“Is your real goal to try to help Americans get the best health care they can? In which case he will support the Affordable Care act,” Warren said at a town hall at Framingham State University last night.
“But if his real goal is to just try to score political points, then what he is going to do is, every chance he gets, try to knock the legs out from underneath the Affordable Care Act and bring it down.”
For herself, Warren noted that Obamacare could in fact unravel, and she said Washington could take a lesson from how Massachusetts tweaked Romneycare after its passage in 2006.
“We got part of it in place, and then we made some changes,” Warren said. “We tried to make it a little better. Then we learned some, and then we made some more changes. Health care is complex, even though Donald Trump didn’t know that. Most of us here in Massachusetts knew that, but we worked together to keep improving it.”