Rand Paul: Trump Agrees to Repeal, Replace Obamacare at Same Time
No timetable or details.
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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Comments
Does anyone think this is controversial?
The Dems devoted several thousand pages of legalese to making their plan a permanent “done deal”. It’s pure Democratic hand grenades and booby-traps.
So, did the Repubs devote the last eight years to studying its weaknesses and crafting a replacement? Of course not! The old GOPe intended to do nothing; grouse a-plenty but take no steps to reverse the outrage.
But the voters chose someone who’s not content to just lie down and let the Dems trample all over us. So it’s time for the Repubs to get off their buttskis and get to work.
But they can’t kill the Democrat-crafted disaster until there’s a replacement. Until then, it’s the only insurance scheme most of us have; it’s not an optional luxury we can do without by just gritting our teeth.
This should be bloody obvious, but much of the commentariat seems to be playing dumb.
The replacement does not have to be the absolute greatest health insurance plan anyone has ever imagined. But it does have to work, at least for a while.
The damn socialists have almost unlimited countries in the world that will support their socialists schemes. There is no other place in the world for those who wish to be free of government entanglements to go.
Replacing government healthcare with government healthcare agrees with the socialist argument that the old socialism didn’t work because of those who ran it but will work now because of the new boss.
Welcome to the new boss, same as the old boss.
Awesome. Republicans working together to promote the general Welfare. The goal is universal health care. The obstacle is progressive costs. Cost shifting should not be a primary tactic. Beware, this is not a State laboratory. Good luck!
It’s cynical, I suppose, but I cannot shake the feeling that somehow, yet again, the GOPe is gonna f**k it all up.
Actually, it isn’t cynical. It’s a reasonable response to their record over the past 8-10 years.
I don’t believe that the term you seek is “cynical.” Try “learned response.”
So the Democrats crafted a Gordian knot problem. There is a solution.
Repeal and replace is replacing government controlled healthcare with government controlled healthcare.
Welcome to the new boss, same as the old boss.
The only replacement needed, or wanted, is the free market.
It automatically will take effect as soon as Obamacare is fully repealed.
No one wants to replace Obamacare with Trumpcare. The problem with Obamacare is that it is run by the federal government. ANY replacement would have the same problem. The solution is to get the feds OUT of our health insurance markets.
If you want a free market, then it will be necessary to repeal the 1945 McCarran–Ferguson Act which caused a lot of these problems in the first place. Among other things, it:
This is why you can’t by insurance from another state.
Give the VA system to the medicaid recipients and then work on fixing that. It’s sick that our vets have worse healthcare than people who can’t even hold a job (I don’t mean that they are lazy, but one group sacrificed a lot more for this country)
Dems will just have to wait for the replacement pass in order to see what it is.
Kill ObamaCare now!