Trumpcare family feud
WASHINGTON — President Trump promised a “beautiful picture” and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) resorted to PowerPoint slides to defend Republicans’ plans to repeal Obamacare, but the image of a party at war with itself was everywhere on Thursday.
“Despite what you hear in the press, health care is coming along great. We are talking to many groups and it will end in a beautiful picture!” Trump tweeted at noon.
But one of Trump’s fiercest Senate defenders didn’t agree, calling for Republicans to “start over” on the bill.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a hardline conservative and close Trump ally who recently met with him at the White House, predicted the bill as written would never make into law.
“House health-care bill can’t pass Senate w/o major changes. To my friends in House: pause, start over. Get it right, don’t get it fast,” Cotton said in a series of tweets, comparing House Republicans’ “arbitrary” rush to move the bill forward with how Democrats proceeded in passing the law seven years ago.
Cotton is the latest Republican to come out firing against the bill’s provisions to create health care tax credits and slam the plan for slowwalking an end to Medicaid expansion.
Ryan (R-Wis.) all but begged them to fall in line on Thursday.
“This is the chance, and the best and only chance we’re going to get,” Ryan said. ALBANY — The House GOP plan to repeal and replace Obamacare would jeopardize the insurance coverage of more than 1 million New Yorkers and cost the state and its hospitals $2.4 billion a year once fully phased in, Gov. Cuomo said Thursday.
And things could get worse, Cuomo warned, if “far-right” congressional Republicans who claim the GOP bill doesn’t go far enough successfully push for even more changes.
Cuomo said an analysis by the state Health Department found more than 1 million New Yorkers would face a significant loss in health care coverage and that $4.5 billion in costs would be shifted from the feds to the state, counties and hospitals over the next four years, including $2.4 billion per year once the new program is in place starting in 2020.