After Senate Republican defections killed off the latest Trumpcare bill on Monday night, President Trump tweeted his support for changing course and immediately repealing Obamacare before a bipartisan replacement plan is drawn up at some point down the road.
Republicans should just REPEAL failing ObamaCare now & work on a new Healthcare Plan that will start from a clean slate. Dems will join in!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 18, 2017
Repealing Obamacare without replacement legislation would have devastating consequences. According to an analysis of immediate repeal the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) conducted in 2015, it would result in 18 million people losing coverage within a year, along with dramatically increased premiums.
By Wednesday morning, Trump indicated his position his changed. He tweeted his support for just letting Obamacare “fail” on its own and said that had always been his stance.
As I have always said, let ObamaCare fail and then come together and do a great healthcare plan. Stay tuned!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 18, 2017
Aside from the first part of Trump’s tweet being inaccurate — Trump himself tweeted a different position the previous day—Obamacare isn’t failing. In March, the CBO concluded that Obamacare exchanges are likely to “be stable in most areas.”
“The subsidies to purchase coverage combined with the penalties paid by uninsured people stemming from the individual mandate are anticipated to cause sufficient demand for insurance by people with low health care expenditures for the market to be stable,” the CBO wrote, debunking notions that Obamacare is in a “death spiral.”
But the Trump administration has already indicated a willingness to do what it can to sabotage Obamacare by publicly threatening to not make the cost-sharing (CSR) payments low-income Americans use to afford coverage on the exchanges. The instability Trump and other Republicans have created by not committing to CSR payments “has already accelerated the collapse of health care exchanges as insurers move to limit their risk by raising prices or withdrawing from markets altogether,” the Weekly Standard detailed last month.
Then, on Wednesday, Trump tweeted out a third health care position in 36 hours, this time encouraging Republican senators to try harder to sell Trumpcare to the public.
The Republicans never discuss how good their healthcare bill is, & it will get even better at lunchtime.The Dems scream death as OCare dies!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 19, 2017
The problem with Trump’s latest suggestion is that Trumpcare has remained unpopular — both in its own right and in relation to existing law — since the framework of the House version first came together in March. It’s hard to make a case for stripping coverage from more than 20 million people and weakening protections for consumers, and the Trump administration’s effort to do so has primarily consisted of misinformation and lies.
Trump’s health care luncheon with Republicans comes a day after he reacted to Trumpcare’s latest setback by revealing he has no clue about Senate rules and trying to pin blame on Democrats.
BREAKING: Trump says Republicans should `let Obamacare fail,' says, `I'm not going to own it'
— The Associated Press (@AP) July 18, 2017
Playing the blame game also represents a break from Trump’s past rhetoric. In 2012, for instance, he tweeted that “Obama’s complaints about Republicans stopping his agenda are BS since he had full control for two years. He can never take responsibility.”