A clearly disappointed President Donald J. Trump said on Friday after it became apparent that Republicans in the House would not have enough votes to pass what many saw as a watered-down version of the Affordable Care Act, dubbed “Obamacare Lite.”
As reported by Grabien News, the president, who sat in the Oval Office flanked by Vice President Mike Pence and Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, made it a point to mention that the GOP bill had absolutely zero support from Democrats, the party responsible for passing Obamacare in the first place.
So now, the president noted, there really isn’t anything left to do but let the law collapse on its own, which he predicted throughout his campaign that it would do.
“We were very close and it was a very, very tight margin. We had no Democrat support. We had no votes from the Democrats. They weren’t going to give us a single vote so it’s a very difficult thing to do. I’ve been saying for the last year and a half that the best thing we can do politically speaking is let ObamaCare explode. It is exploding right now,” Trump said. (RELATED: Trump Meets With Obamacare Victims At White House During “Listening Session” Obama Never Held)
“Many states have big problems, almost all states have big problems. I was in Tennessee the other day and they’ve lost half of their state in terms of an insurer. They have no insurer,” he continued. “And that’s happening to many other places. I was in Kentucky the other day and similar things are happening. So, ObamaCare is exploding with no Democrat support.
“We couldn’t quite get there with just a very small number of votes short in terms of getting our bill passed,” Trump said of lacking Republican support. “A lot of people don’t realize how good our bill was because they were viewing Phase One. But when you add Phase Two, which was mostly the signs of secretary Price who is behind it, and you add Phase Three which I think we would have gotten, it became a great bill. Premiums would have gone down and it would have been very stable, would have been very strong. But that’s okay. But we’re very, very close and, again, I think what will happen is ObamaCare, unfortunately, will explode.”
Whether by design or not – well, it was by design, let’s just put that out there – the discredited Washington establishment media, which is all about protecting and defending their demi-god former president, Barack Obama, steadfastly refused to accurately report what the now-stalled American Health Care Act would do, only what it wouldn’t.
For one, the legislation did jump-start the beginnings of a free-market reform system through the expansion of tax-deductible health savings accounts. For another, the legislation would have finally ended the insult of having taxpayers support Planned Parenthood to the tune of $500 million a year. Many Americans have expressed their disapproval after revelations surfaced in recent years that several Planned Parenthood clinics were selling aborted fetal tissue and body parts.
Also, the legislation would have repealed all of the law’s taxes, which would have made it nearly impossible for Price’s HHS to enforce or enact much of it. And it would have begun the transition away from Medicaid expansion, and while not repealing the subsidies yet, would have provided Americans with tax credits to help pay for their own coverage. Oh, and the individual and employer mandate penalties would have gone away.
Again, not perfect but clearly a start.
Phase Two of the legislation would have occurred at HHS, where Price was planning to deregulate the health insurance and health care markets, getting rid of many of Obamacare’s rules so that companies could operate more cheaply while competing for health insurance customers.
The bill also left in place rules prohibiting insurance companies from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions and placing lifetime caps on payouts. And it also preserved the rule allowing children to be covered on their parents’ plan until age 26 – all of which were popular among Americans.
But for now anyway, none of that is going to happen. It looks as though the president has resigned himself to the fact that no repeal-and-replace legislation will be passed anytime soon, leaving Obamacare intact, along with its collapse trajectory. (RELATED: Obamacare collapsing as rates double, exchanges implode: nowhere for Americans to turn)
How many Americans will be bankrupted or be forced to live dangerously without coverage because they can’t afford it in the meantime is anyone’s guess. But you can bet they’re out there.
The worthless pretend media in Washington, along with Democrats and some Republicans, will try to make this look like a Trump failure, but I think that strategy backfires. I think Americans will rightly see this as a congressional failure, not a Trump failure.
J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for NaturalNews.com and NewsTarget.com, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.
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