Obama to GOP: I will support Obamacare repeal if you produce a better plan
President Obama vowed to publicly support congressional Republicans’ plan to repeal his signature health care law if they put forward an alternative proposal that can prove it covers as many people for less money.
“I am saying to every Republican right now, if you in fact can put a plan together that is demonstrably better than what Obamacare is doing, I will publicly support repealing Obamacare and replacing it with your plan,” Obama said in an interview with Vox. “But I want to see it first.”
Obama added that Republicans could rename the Affordable Care Act “TrumpCare,” “McConnellCare” or “RyanCare,” and he would not object.
“I don’t have pride of authorship on this thing,” Obama said, noting that Republicans named the health care reform after him to better organize against it. “If they can come up with something better, I’m for it. And I would advise every Democrat to be for it.”
The outgoing president’s comments come as the Republican-controlled Congress took preliminary steps to repeal the law this week through a budget reconciliation process that Democrats could not block. House Speaker Paul Ryan said the lawmakers would repeal the plan but keep subsidies to buy insurance in place until they come up with an as-yet-unspecified replacement. A few Republican senators have objected, saying they think the GOP needs to have an alternate health care proposal in hand before repealing the Affordable Care Act, which covers 20 million Americans. Other Republicans are seeking for a full repeal of subsidies, effective immediately.
Obama admitted the law could use some improvements. “The subsidies aren’t as high as they probably should be for a lot of working people,” he said, and added that in rural areas, in particular, the prices are too high because of a lack of competition among insurers.
But Obama said he doubted that congressional Republicans would sit down in earnest to fix those issues, because the GOP leadership has signaled that it wants to cut taxes that would help pay for the coverage. On the campaign trail, President-elect Donald Trump said he would not cut Medicaid, and top adviser Kellyanne Conway recently vowed that no one would lose insurance coverage after Obamacare’s repeal. It’s unclear how Republicans would accomplish covering 20 million people for less than the current plan.
“The strategy of ‘repeal first and replace later’ is just a huge disservice to the American people and is something I think whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat you should be opposed to,” Obama said. “These are real lives at stake.”
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