Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said that President-elect Donald Trump backs his plan to appeal the Affordable Care Act only if the government has a replacement at the same time:
“He called after seeing an interview that I had done [talking about] that we should vote on Obamacare replacement at the same time,” Paul said in an interview on Monday. “He said he was in complete agreement with that.”
Trump’s incoming Chief of Staff Reince Priebus told Face the Nation that repeal and replacing “would be ideal,” but “[I]t may take time to get all the elements of the replace in one place.” But Trump said otherwise:
“I’d hate to characterize his opinion on it other than he agreed with me that we should do it that at the same time,” Paul said. “There is momentum growing for it.”
Last week, Vice President-elect Mike Pence said that Trump planned to use executive actions to repeal the law:
“It will be an orderly transition to something better … using executive authority to ensure it’s an orderly transition,” Pence told reporters. “We’re working now on a series of executive orders that will enable that orderly transition to take place even as Congress appropriately debates alternatives to and replacements for ObamaCare.”
At the same time, though, Trump warned Republicans to use caution and keep in mind “the political consequences of moving quickly to repeal the law.” A lot of Republicans eagerly jumped on the wagon to immediately throw it out, but Paul and a few others wanted to wait until the party had a replacement plan. The senator said “wasn’t trying to slow the process down, but instead said it’s a ‘matter of speeding up’ the replacement efforts.” He continued:
“We need to work through the discussion. I think there are enough voices in the caucus that are saying we should do replacement when we repeal. So it could get to that point,” Paul said, adding that he’d still likely support a standalone repeal bill. “I still would but I’d feel a lot better about it if we voted on replacement on the same day.”
Trump said on Monday that he has no concerns “about how Republicans will replace Obamacare” and believes everything will “work out.”
No one has offered many specifics or even a timetable. Then again, I would not describe repealing Obamacare as easy and fast. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) met with Trump on Sunday:
“We will be replacing it rapidly after repealing it,” the Kentucky Republican said Sunday on CBS. He wasn’t specific about the timing of the drafting of a new health-care system, or what it would entail, but he said, “There ought not to be a great gap between the first step and the second.”On Monday, Mr. McConnell told reporters that he and Mr. Trump “had a good meeting about the Senate agenda, which of course includes confirming the cabinet appointments [and] getting further down the road toward repealing and replacing Obamacare.”
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