Trump signs order in effort to put stamp on health care
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump capped his fruitless four-year journey to abolish and replace the Affordable Care Act by signing an executive order Thursday that aims to enshrine the law’s most popular feature while pivoting away from a broader effort to overhaul the nation’s health insurance system.
The order declares that it is the “policy” of the United States for people with preexisting health conditions to be protected, avoiding the thorny details of how to ensure such protections without either leaving “Obamacare” in place or crafting new comprehensive legislation.
Trump announced the move during a trip to North Carolina, outlining his “vision” for revamping parts of the nation’s health care. During the speech, which came shortly before a campaign swing to Florida, Trump barely veiled the political nature of his intent.
“The historic action I’m taking today includes the first-ever executive order to affirm it is the official policy of the United States government to protect patients with preexisting conditions,” Trump said, despite the fact that such protections are already enshrined in law. “We’re making that official. We’re putting it down in a stamp, because our opponents the Democrats like to constantly talk about it.”
The speech and executive order stood as a tacit admission that Trump had failed to keep his 2016 promise to replace his predecessor’s signature achievement with a conservative alternative. For a president who campaigned in 2016 pledging to “repeal and replace” Obamacare, Trump’s 2020 signature health care speech instead expressed a willingness to keep the law largely in place. Unable to repeal the law, Trump appeared open to simply rebranding it.
“Obamacare is no longer Obamacare, as we worked on it and managed it very well,” Trump said of the law that continues to provide coverage for more than 20 million Americans. “What we have now is a much better plan. It is no longer Obamacare because we got rid of the worse part of it, the individual mandate.”
While Trump’s 2017 tax law did eliminate the requirement that virtually all Americans maintain insurance, Obamacare remains in place, with its expansion of Medicaid and insurance markets covering millions.
The failure to repeal and replace Obamacare has not stopped Trump from repeatedly promising a soon-to-come health care plan, in a repetitive cycle of boastful pledges and missed deadlines that intensified in recent weeks ahead of the November election.
Trump’s speech and executive action Thursday constituted his most concrete effort yet to make good on those pledges by spelling out his health care principles and criticizing his opponents.
“We’ve really become the health care party — the Republican Party” Trump said before reading a list of his accomplishments that pointedly did not include replacing Obamacare.
But even as other Republicans have tried to avoid the issue of health care — with some appearing to defend components of Obamacare in political ads — Trump has continued to raise the subject and promise a soon-to-come comprehensive proposal.