Trump jumps into health debate — repeal now, replace later

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has barged into Senate Republicans’ delicate health care negotiations with a suggestion bound to muddle things: If you can’t cut a deal on repealing the Obama-era law, then repeal it right away and then replace it later.

Trump is trying to revive an approach that GOP leaders and the president himself considered but dismissed months ago as impractical and politically unwise.

And it’s likely to further complicate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s task as he struggles to bridge the divide between moderates and conservatives.

Senators have left Washington for the Fourth of July break without voting on a bill as planned.

“If Republican Senators are unable to pass what they are working on now, they should immediately REPEAL, and then REPLACE at a later date!” Trump wrote early Friday.

Later that day, McConnell told reporters after an event in his home state of Kentucky that the health bill was challenging but “we are going to stick with that path.”

He added: “It’s not easy making America great again, is it?”

The president tweeted his message shortly after Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., had appeared on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends” to discuss a letter he’d sent to Trump suggesting a vote on repealing former President Barack Obama’s health law, followed by a new effort at a working out a replacement.

Trump’s suggestion has the potential to harden divisions within the GOP as conservatives like Paul and Sasse complain that McConnell’s bill does not go far enough in repealing Obama’s health care law while moderates criticize it as overly harsh in kicking people off insurance rolls, shrinking the Medicaid safety net and increasing premiums for older Americans.

McConnell has been working to make deals with members of both factions in order to finalize a rewritten bill lawmakers can vote on when they return to the Capitol the second week of July. Even before Trump weighed in, though, it wasn’t clear how far he was getting. Trump’s tweet did not appear to suggest a lot of White House confidence in the outcome.

“McConnell’s trying to achieve a 50-vote Venn diagram between some very competing factions,” said Rodney Whitlock, a veteran health policy expert who worked as a Senate GOP aide during passage of the Democrats’ Affordable Care Act.