Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell delivered a reality check to Trump by telling the President that he is not going to be able to let the ACA implode. Instead, if the Senate health care bill fails, Democrats will enter negotiations to save the health insurance market and Obamacare will grow stronger.
Politico reported, “President Donald Trump continued to float the possibility on Monday that Congress and the White House would simply let Obamacare’s individual markets collapse if the GOP’s repeal effort goes down later this week. But McConnell called up Trump recently, according to people with knowledge of the call, to deliver a reality check. Voters expect Republicans to deliver on their long-held promise to repeal the law, McConnell said, according to those people. And failing to repeal the law would mean the GOP would lose its opportunity to do a partisan rewrite of the law that could scale back Medicaid spending, cut Obamacare’s taxes and repeal a host of industry mandates. Instead, Republicans would be forced to enter into bipartisan negotiations with Democrats to save failing insurance markets.”
The warning was McConnell’s way of trying to push his Republicans to hold their noses and vote for this legislation, but there has been little movement towards the bill from conservatives or moderates. The conservatives appear to be willing to let Obamacare stand until they can get a total repeal bill. The moderates don’t want to touch the Medicaid expansion or throw people off of their coverage, so the impasse within the Senate GOP will remain if this bill fails.
Trump and many Congressional Republicans are in denial, but as of right now, Democrats are winning the fight on this health care bill. The Republican moderates know that they can get a lot of what they want in a healthcare bill by working with the Democrats, and the bill would pass the Senate with 60 votes or more. It would be the same situation in the House, where a bill to stabilize the insurance markets would get the support of Democrats and combined with House Republican moderates would be enough to pass legislation.
Republicans have been clobbered on health care, and Democrats are one final vote away from saving Obamacare.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
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