‘Let Obamacare fail’ Trump says as GOP bill collapses
WASHINGTON— Trumpcare is toast. In a colossal public defeat for U.S. President Donald Trump and his party, Republican leaders failed in their attempt to repeal Obamacare after they were unable to gain sufficient Senate support for a widely unpopular bill that would have resulted in millions of people losing their health insurance.
Trump said he would now “let Obamacare fail” — suggesting, remarkably, that he would rather let Americans suffer than fix lingering problems with the nation’s health-care system.
“It will be a lot easier,” he said. “We’re not going to own it. I’m not going to own it. I can tell you the Republicans are not going to own it. We’ll let Obamacare fail and then the Democrats are going to come to us.”
Some Republican members of Congress came to believe they were better off punting on repeal-and-replace than getting punished in future elections for passing a bad bill. But the outcome is difficult to spin as anything other than a political calamity.
Trump declared during his campaign that repealing Obamacare would be “so easy.”
Instead, he wasted his precious first six months on a proposal that went nowhere even with Republican control of Congress. And Republicans were unable to deliver on a pledge central to their campaigns for seven years.
The failure undermines one of the central premises of Trump’s candidacy, his claim to be a master dealmaker whose toughness and negotiating expertise would allow him to smash through Washington gridlock. But Trump blamed Congress, not himself.
“For seven years, I’ve been hearing ‘repeal and replace’ from Congress, and I’ve been hearing it loud and strong. And then when we finally get a chance to repeal and replace, they don’t take advantage of it. So that’s disappointing,” he said.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he would still force a vote on a proposal to forget about replacement for now and simply repeal Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, with the repeal taking effect in two years.
But that improbable last-gasp plan effectively died before 1p.m. on Tuesday, when three Republican senators said they would vote against even the motion to go ahead with a final vote.
“Repealing without a replacement would create great uncertainty for individuals who rely on the ACA and cause further turmoil in insurance markets,” said one of them, Maine Sen. Susan Collins.
“I did not come to Washington to hurt people,” said another, West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito.
Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski provided the decisive vote against the “motion to proceed,” telling NBC that repeal-and-delay “just creates more chaos and confusion.”
The Republican initiative failed in large part because of the steep cuts it would have made to Medicaid, the program that provides insurance to the poor.
Non-partisan government experts estimated that 22 million fewer peo- ple would have insurance in 2026 under the Republican proposal than under Obamacare, 15 million fewer through Medicaid alone.
There were other problems, too: provisions that could have allowed insurers to return to their pre-Obamacare practices of charging higher prices to sick people, selling plans that paid for almost nothing and imposing lifetime limits on coverage. Complicating matters for McConnell, some hard-right conservatives opposed the bill from the other side, arguing that it did not amount to complete repeal of Obamacare.
The outcome is a major victory for the anti-Trump “resistance” activist movement. Citizens seeking to save Obamacare inundated senators with phone calls and packed local town hall meetings, forcing key senators to hear emotional stories about how Obama’s Affordable Care Act has helped them.
But the opposition extended far beyond loud liberals. The bill was one of the most detested pieces of major legislation in modern U.S. history, with less than a third of the public supportive.
Republican governors from states that benefited from Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid were vocally against. So were the hospitals lobby, the doctors lobby, the nurses lobby, the seniors lobby, and advocates for people with cancer, diabetes, addictions and disabilities.
With Democratic senators united in opposition, McConnell could only afford to lose the support of two Republicans.
He ended up losing at least four. In a dubious boast, Trump said a “48-4” outcome would be “a pretty impressive vote by any standard” — ignoring the existence of Democrats.