Trump urges repeal of health law now and replacing it later

If they remove the Obamacare, the Americans won’t get the Medicaid safety net. As one Senate GOP aide put it, “No matter how narrowly-proposed, wading into pre-ex is not just a “No, ‘ it’s a ‘Hell No” for the vast majority of the Senate GOP”.

“The Senate health care bill will repeal Obamacare taxes”, according to Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. Former President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law in 2010, and Republicans have been trying to get rid of it ever since.

And although Americans go to the doctor less often than Canadians, they go to the hospital more, probably because we avoid low-priced preventive care until we have no choice but go to an emergency room.

Trump’s new-found approach was an idea drafted by Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska in a letter to the President last week.

Sasse reiterated his support for such an approach in an appearance on CNN Sunday. He said he would be writing a letter to President Trump Friday morning “urging him to call on us to separate them”.

Later that day, McConnell told reporters after an event in his home state of Kentucky that the health bill was challenging but “we are going to stick with that path”. If that is the context for the revisions of the Affordable Care Act, then it is a gross misrepresentation of the values that we Americans hold sacred: equality, health and justice for all.

Potentially complicating matters is the prospect of moving past the proposed plan and completely repealing Obamacare before coming up with a replacement. Conservative Republicans are calling for separate efforts, urging quick action to undo Obamacare to allow more time for the hard endeavor of structuring its replacement. The only way to ensure that is to keep repeal and replacement linked, even if that means having a bill no one really cheers, and hoping that Tom Price at HHS can plug the gaps for a while on the regulatory side.

Cassidy, a doctor who worked for years in Louisiana’s charity hospital system, remained noncommittal about the Senate version of the health bill, though he’s criticized similar legislation passed by the House.

“Sometimes when you lump too many things into one piece of legislation, you doom its likelihood of success and I fear that that might be where we are today”, he said.

The Republican plans that have been rolled out in the House and Senate would make these problems even worse.

Two: McConnell doesn’t have 50 votes for a straight repeal. Here in Montana at Providence St. Patrick Hospital, Providence St. Joseph Medical Center and our Providence Medical Group clinics, we are serving many more people who now have regular access to care, often for the first time.

Congressional approval and, ultimately, public acceptance of a new federal health care law turns on how well more than 300 million Americans can answer the question: “How will this affect me?” The idea was to vote as quickly as possible to repeal the ACA, thus fulfilling their long-standing campaign promise, and soon after figure out what to replace it with. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent and 2016 Democratic presidential contender. New language was also added to allow for Health Spending Accounts funds to be used for insurance premiums, to quell members’ concerns.