Late changes may boost health bill, Trump suggests
WASHINGTON — Making a final push, President Trump said he doesn’t think congressional Republicans are “that far off ” on a health overhaul to replace “the dead carcass of Obamacare” and signaled that last-minute changes were coming to win enough support for passage. GOP critics expressed doubt over a successful vote this week.
“We have a very good plan,” Trump said in an interview on “Fox & Friends” broadcast Sunday. Referring to Republican senators opposed to the bill, he said: “They want to get some points, I think they’ll get some points.”
Trump’s optimism comes amid the opposition of five GOP senators so far to the Senate plan that would scuttle much of former President Barack Obama’s health law. Unless those holdouts can be swayed, their numbers are more than enough to torpedo the measure developed in private by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and deliver a bitter defeat for the president.
McConnell has said he’s willing to make changes to win support, and in the week ahead, plenty of backroom bargaining is expected. He is seeking to push a final package through the Senate before the July 4 recess.
At least two GOP senators said Sunday that goal may prove too ambitious.
“I would like to delay,” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., one of the five senators opposing the bill, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “These bills aren’t ... addressing the root cause,” he said, referring to rising health care costs.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said on ABC’s “This Week” that seven to eight other senators including herself were troubled by provisions that she believes could cut Medicaid even more than the House version.
Collins, who also opposes proposed cuts to Planned Parenthood, said she would await an analysis Monday from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office before taking a final position on the bill. But she said it will be “extremely difficult” for the White House to be able to find a narrow path to attract both conservatives and moderates.
“It’s hard for me to see the bill passing this week,” Collins said.
The Senate bill resembles legislation the House approved last month. A Congressional Budget Office analysis of the House measure predicts an additional 23 million people over the next decade would have no health care coverage, and recent polling shows only around 1 in 4 Americans views the House bill favorably.
With unanimous opposition from Democrats, McConnell can afford to lose just two of the 52 GOP senators and still prevail on the bill.