» Gingrey: Instead of repealing it, GOP should fix Obamacare,

One-time ACA foe: Health care is too integral to disrupt.

Phil Gingrey, a physician and former Georgia con- gressman who was a fierce opponent of Obamacare, on Tuesday counseled fellow Republicans to give up the fight to repeal the Affordable Care Act and instead work with Democrats to “retain, repair and revise it.”

“While complete repeal and replacement may have made sense in 2010 — when the GOP first took back control of the Congress and the ACA was not yet implemented — too much time has passed and too much of our nation’s health care infrastructure has been altered to get all the toothpaste back into the tube,” Gingrey wrote in an article posted on the website of the District Policy Group, a Washington lobbying firm where he now works.

A 12-year veteran of Congress, Gingrey made an unsuccessful run for U.S. Senate in 2014, promising to repeal Obamacare or go home.

But on Tuesday, Gingrey said Congress should recognize polls that show the House Republican effort passed in May to be “unacceptable.”

Senate Republicans are now struggling to produce their own version of the bill. Majority Leader Mitch McCo- nnell on Tuesday unexpectedly backed a request spearheaded by U.S. Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., to delay the annual five-week August recess.

The Kentucky Republi- can said he would truncate the legislative break by two weeks, allowing the cham- ber to take additional time to work on health care and

other issues. Gingrey counseled bipartisanship, and warned against continued disruptions of the nation’s health care network.

“We should all recognize that the dominant health care policy and program we are living under today is not the ACA, but uncertainty,” Gingrey wrote. “Insurance providers, troubled by the

uncertainty of the future of cost-sharing subsidies and the future insurance market generally, are pulling out of ACA exchanges in state after state.”