Trump says GOP senators are working on an Obamacare replacement and it will be ‘spectacular’
President Donald Trump announced Thursday that a team of GOP senators is ready to give health care another shot after nearly a decade of promising and failing to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.
But he added the caveat that he’s in no rush to get it done.
Trump resurrected the issue this week after the Justice Department, in a court filing Monday, said it supported the full elimination of President Barack Obama‘s signature legislative achievement. The president’s assertion that Republicans would become “the party of health care” surprised some Republicans, who thought they’d missed their chance to replace the law.
Republicans experienced an embarrassing defeat during Trump’s first year in office when they failed to make good on their campaign promise to end Obamacare. The closest they got to dismantling it was to eliminate the penalty on people who didn’t purchase health care.
Instead, the White House used executive actions to chip away at the law, while 20 governors from red states challenged it in court.
Trump named Sens. John Barrasso of Wyoming, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Rick Scottof Florida as the point people on Capitol Hill crafting the legislation.
“They are going to come up with something really spectacular,” Trump told reporters before heading off to a political rally in Michigan.
Trump also claimed that Republicans “will take care of preexisting conditions better than they’re taken care of now.”
The law makes it illegal for health insurers to deny coverage or raise rates on anyone with a preexisting or current illness. Trump did not expand on how it would be improved.
Trump also sounded triumphant about a lawsuit brought by 20 red states to rule Obamacare unconstitutional. A federal judge in Texas ruled in December that the entire law hinged on the fee imposed on people without health insurance. Since Congress eliminated that mandate in its tax bill, the law is no longer constitutional, the judge ruled. An appeal on that case is pending.
According to Trump, those opposed to the ACA are “winning in the courts.”
Democrats campaigned on this issue in November, warning voters that if the courts invalidate the law, then all of its most popular provisions, like protections for people with preexisting conditions, would go down with it.
The law has become increasingly popular with the public, and Democrats credit voters’ concerns about health care for their winning back the House.
Cassidy, one of the three senators Trump named, was also the architect of a replacement bill in 2017 that would have provided block grants to states to allow them to set the guidelines for their insurers. The Senate never voted on it.
All three have been separately working on health care-related legislation, but Trump claims he has asked them to take on the larger endeavor.
Cassidy and Barrasso were both medical doctors. Scott ran a hospital company, which, notably, was fined $1.7 billion for Medicare fraud when he was at the helm.
Trump said he’s not in a rush to get to health care because he’s waiting to see what the courts will decide. Democrats, who are elated to be talking about health care, argue the exact opposite, and say there should be a replacement in place if the ACA is dismantled because otherwise people lose the consumer protections in the law.