Trump bids for a great health law
Flake ‘vulnerable’
WASHINGTON, Oct 8, (AP): Trying to revive healthcare talks, President Donald Trump said Saturday that he had spoken to the Senate’s Democratic leader to gauge whether the minority party was interested in helping pass “great” health legislation.
The answer back: Democrats are willing to hear his ideas, but scrapping the Obama health law is a nonstarter.
Trump’s latest overture to Democrats followed GOP failures so far to fulfill the party’s yearslong promise to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. In spite of controlling the White House and Congress since January, Republicans have not passed the legislation.
The president tweeted that he called New York Sen Chuck Schumer on Friday to discuss the 2010 law known as “Obamacare,” which Trump said “is badly broken, big premiums. Who knows!” Trump said he wanted “to see if the Dems want to do a great HealthCare Bill.”
In remarks Saturday evening on the South Lawn before a trip to North Carolina, Trump said he was willing to consider “a temporary deal.” What that might involve was not clear, but Trump referred to a popular GOP proposal that would have the federal government turn over money for healthcare directly to states in the form of block grants.
“If we could do a one-year deal or a two-year deal as a temporary measure, you’ll have block granting ultimately to the states, which is what the Republicans want. That really is a repeal and replace,” he said. In an interview taped earlier this week and aired Saturday night on Trinity Broadcasting Network, the president assured host Mike Huckabee that “we’ll have healthcare before the election.”
Schumer said through a spokesman Saturday that Trump “wanted to make another run at repeal and replace and I told the president that’s off the table.” Schumer said if Trump “wants to work together to improve the existing healthcare system, we Democrats are open to his suggestions.”
Trump has suggested before that he would be open to negotiating with Democrats on healthcare, but there have been no clear signs of a compromise between Republicans who have sought to scrap president Barack Obama’s law and Democrats who want to protect it.
Schumer said a starting point could be negotiations led by Sens Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn, and Patty Murray, D-Wash, who have been discussing a limited bipartisan deal to stabilize state-level markets for individual health insurance policies. People covered under the health law represent about half of those who purchase individual policies.
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Arizona Republican Sen Jeff Flake’s re-election race is becoming a case study in the GOP’s convulsions among the establishment, a furious base and angry donors.
After bucking Donald Trump in a state the president won, Flake is bottoming out in polls. Yet Republicans look like they may be stuck with a hard-core conservative challenger who some fear could win the primary but lose in the general election.
A White House search for a candidate to replace former state Sen Kelli Ward in the primary appears to have hit a wall. And now conservatives want to turn Arizona into the latest example of a Trump Train outsider taking down a member of the GOP establishment.
“People are fooling themselves if they think Jeff Flake is anything but a walking dead member of the United State Senate,” said Andy Surabian, whose Great America Alliance is backing Ward.
“I don’t see how he survives a primary. I don’t see how he survives a general. The numbers just don’t add up,” added Surabian, who worked at the White House as an adviser to Steve Bannon, then the president’s top strategist.