Fresh of a defeat of the new healthcare bill President Donald Trump and U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan, (R-WI) have said they will not give up trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, and replace it with new legislation. The first attempt went down in flames because the Republican Party was not on the same page about what it wanted in the bill. The new legislation alienated conservative members of the party as well as moderates. After striking out on healthcare reform, Trump and Ryan appear to be gearing up for another trip to the plate.
Trump said that before the attempt to repeal and replace Obamacare went down to defeat that there was no plan B, but that appears to have changed now that Obamacare is still the law of the land.
Republicans have been trying to repeal Obamacare ever since its passage seven years ago and Trump made repealing the law one of his main objectives of his presidential campaign, so allowing Obamacare to stand for the foreseeable future would not be popular among Republican supporters. As we have said previously, the Republicans appear to be on board about repealing Obamacare, but the main roadblock is how to replace it with new legislation.
Trump campaigned on the idea that he was a dealmaker. He insisted that it was not that difficult to make deals considering his business background, but Trump is now realizing that politics is an entirely different animal. Trump met with Republican lawmakers prior to a potential vote on the new healthcare bill, but was unable to sway enough votes to pass the bill and now Trump appear to be taking a backseat on any new legislation that is proposed according to this story from CNN.
Considering some conservative members of the U.S. House are being praised by their constituents for not supporting the new healthcare bill, as this story in Business Insider reveals, it is difficult to imagine conservative members of the Republican Party getting behind any healthcare legislation that would repeal Obamacare. Trump has insinuated that he may turn to the Democratic Party on a healthcare alternative, but obviously that would be difficult for members of the entire Republican Party to stomach. The days of a bipartisan approach to legislation are long gone. Ryan even admitted that he is fearful that Trump would work with Democrats to tweak Obamacare.
“I don’t want that to happen,” Ryan was quoted in this story from Reuters. “I don’t want government running health care.”
Even though Obamacare is based on private insurers providing coverage to the public the Republican Party sticks with the false claim that government is running health care. Ryan is correct, the government does run healthcare, it is called Medicare and Medicaid, which are two programs that the American people have said they are overwhelmingly supportive of.
Others in the Republican Party, mainly U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, (R-KY), have already seemed to admit defeat on a Republican package to replace Obamacare.
“It’s pretty obvious that we were not able, in the House, to pass a replacement. Our Democratic friends ought to be pretty happy about that because we have the existing law in place, and I think we are just going to have to see how that works out,” McConnell told CNN.
The bottom line is that Obamacare stands and even if a replacement does achieve approval in Congress, it may be nothing more than a few tweaks to improve the current law.
