President-elect Donald Trump promised that his administration will put forth a plan to “repeal and replace,” Obamacare, once his choice for Secretary of Health and Human Services is confirmed by Congress, remarks made at a press conference Wednesday.
“As soon as the Secretary is approved, we will be filing a plan,” Trump said at a press conference Wednesday. The plan will be “repeal and replace Obamacare.”
Trump’s statement Wednesday is interesting, as it comes just after he demanded Tuesday that Congress immediately repeal Obamacare and urgently pass another health care law. Trump did, however, reiterate that repealing and replacing Obamacare would occur “simultaneously.”
The president-elect says that while the burdens of Obamacare are now a Republican problem, Obamacare is a problem created by the Democrats. “We are going to take the problem off the shelves for them. We are doing a tremendous service for that,” Trump said.
Trump made it clear that any Republican plans which would repeal President Obama’s landmark health care legislation, but fail to implement a viable replacement in the immediate present, are unacceptable. Republicans are making repealing Obamacare the top priority once Trump takes office.
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan echoes the president-elect on priorities. “Well, the first bill we’re going to be working on is our ObamaCare legislation,” Ryan told “60 Minutes” in December. “I don’t know the answer to that right now. What we know is we have to make good on this promise. We have to bring relief as fast as possible to people who are struggling under ObamaCare.”
Republican leadership is signaling their intent to take things slow enough to ensure that any move to repeal and replace Obamacare is done correctly. “There’s just going to be hearings. The Democrats spent a lot of time screwing up the economy and screwing up healthcare, and it’s going to take us a lot of time trying to rectify it,” a leading House conservative, Rep. Raul Labrador, told reporters.
Under Trump’s replacement plan, “we are going to have a health care that is far less expensive and far better,” Trump said.
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