President Trump said Monday it will take a year or two for prices to go down under the GOP’s plan to repeal and replace Obamacare — and then blamed the media for Republicans’ struggle to get the plan passed.
“We are not going to have one-size-fits-all,” Trump said at a White House meeting with people dissatisfied with the Affordable Care Act, thanking the participants for sharing their tales of woe about “the very, very failed and failing Obamacare law.”
The president then turned his wrath on a favorite target.
“The press is making Obamacare look so good suddenly. I’m watching the news. It looks so good. … First of all, it covers very few people and it’s imploding. And ’17 will be the worst year,” he said.
The remark mirrored a charge he first made on Friday that ex-President Obama and Congressional Democrats purposely planned for the bill to “explode” in 2017 after Obama left office.
“It’s a little bit like President Obama. When he left, people liked him. When he was here, people didn’t like him so much. That’s the way life goes. That’s human nature. The fact is, Obamacare is a disaster,” the president said.
Speaking to the participants, who complained about rate hikes among other things, Trump touted the replacement plan the GOP has cobbled together.
“You’re not going to have one-size-fits-all. Instead, we’re going to be working to unleash the power of the private marketplace to let insurers come in and compete for your business and you’ll see rates go down, down, down and you’ll see plans go up, up, up,” he said.
“You’ll have a lot of choices. You’ll have plans that nobody is even thinking of today.”
The news came as Republicans were bracing for a Congressional Budget Office analysis widely expected to conclude that fewer Americans will have health coverage under the proposal, despite Trump’s promise of “insurance for everybody.”
House Speaker Paul Ryan said he fully expects the CBO analysis to find less coverage since the GOP plan eliminates the penalty on those who aren’t insured.
But Ryan and Trump administration officials vowed to move forward on their “repeal and replace” plan, insisting they can work past GOP disagreements.
“What we’re trying to achieve here is bringing down the cost of care, bringing down the cost of insurance not through government mandates and monopolies but by having more choice and competition,” Ryan (R-Wis.), said on Sunday. “We’re not going to make an American do what they don’t want to do.”