President suggests just repeal Obamacare, then try to replace it
President Donald Trump entered Senate Republicans’ health care negotiations Friday, declaring that if lawmakers can’t reach a deal they should repeal “Obamacare” right away and then replace it later on.
Trump’s tweet revives an approach that GOP leaders and the president himself considered but dismissed months ago. It may further complicate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s task as he works to bridge the divide between GOP moderates and conservatives as senators leave Washington for the Fourth of July break without having voted on a health care 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.
Trump’s suggestion has the potential to harden divisions within the GOP as conservatives 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 roles, shrinking the Medicaid safety net and increasing premiums for older Americans.
McConnell, R-Ky., has been trying to strike 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.
“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. “So what the president tweeted takes one side of that Venn diagram and pushes it further away, and actually puts on the table an option that will probably drive that group away from seeking compromise with the other side of the Venn diagram.”
A McConnell spokesman declined to comment on Trump’s tweet.
Republicans previously had debated and ultimately discarded the idea of repealing Obamacare before replacing it, concluding that both must happen simultaneously. Doing otherwise would invite accusations that Republicans were simply tossing people off coverage and would roil insurance markets by raising the question of whether, when and how Congress might replace Obama’s law once it was gone.
The idea also would leave unresolved the quandary lawmakers are struggling with now, about how to replace Obama’s system of online insurance markets, tax subsidies and an expanded Medicaid with something that could get enough Republican votes to pass Congress.