President Obama rallied his troops on Capitol Hill Wednesday to defend his health care law, insisting the politics are on their side as the GOP plots its Obamacare repeal.
After a meeting that stretched nearly two hours, House and Senate Democrats emerged to say they are unified in defending the 2010 law, and predicted the GOP won’t even be able to get all of its own members on board, much less entice Democrats to the table for the repeal effort.
“They’re going to have far more trouble than they ever imagined,” said Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat.
Both the GOP and Democrats agree that the first fight of the new Congress will be over the 2010 Affordable Care Act, which reshaped the U.S. insurance system, offering massive government subsidies to draw new customers into the market, hoping younger, healthier people would keep costs low.
Instead, many young and healthy have resisted joining, the administration has missed signup projections, and insurance companies have responded by spiking premiums and cutting their offerings.
That’s left those customers still on Obamacare’s exchanges facing fewer choices and higher costs.
Republicans are counting on that pain to convince voters they’re better off without the law, while Democrats say the millions who didn’t have insurance before but do now will blame the GOP for taking it away.
Americans tell pollsters they’re dissatisfied with Obamacare, but there’s little consensus on what to do about it. Some want to see more government control over the health care market — the approach favored by Democrats in last year’s presidential campaign — while others want to see more market forces unleashed.
Mr. Obama is banking on the 20 million Americans who have coverage, either on Obamacare’s exchanges or through expanded Medicaid, to be the bulwark for defending the law.
“It’s a very different story to take something away from someone,” said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat.
President-elect Donald Trump, who attacked the law during the campaign and promised a repeal, said Wednesday that Republicans need to tread carefully, lest they end up owning the collapsing health law.
“The Dems own the failed ObamaCare disaster, with its poor coverage and massive premium increases,” he said in a series of Twitter posts. “Don’t let the Schumer clowns out of this web… massive increases of ObamaCare will take place this year and Dems are to blame for the mess. It will fall of its own weight — be careful!”
Mr. Schumer said the difficulty Democrats have faced over the years is that any problems in the health care system have been blamed on Obamacare. Now, he said, Republicans will face that situation — and will take the blame — for what goes wrong.
“They want to repeal it and blame it on us. Not gonna happen,” he said.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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