House Republicans exactly a year ago were toasting their Obamacare repeal bill with beers, cheers and backslaps in a ceremony with President Trump in the White House Rose Garden.
Mr. Trump said he was “so confident” they’d be able to push the bill through the Senate as well, delivering his first major legislative win.
Twelve months later Obamacare still stands — though its been severely wounded by the GOP’s move to repeal the individual mandate — and Democrats will ask voters in November to provide the embattled law a new boost.
Progressive groups on Friday will hold “accountability” rallies from Arizona to Maine that dredge up the ugliest parts of last year’s Obamacare debate.
Save My Care, a pro-Obamacare coalition, is spotlighting budget analyses that said the GOP plan, had it passed, would have knocked more than 20 million Americans out of health coverage over the coming decade.
Democrats and their progressive allies say the weekend blitz serves a dual purpose — to extract a political price as they try to flip 24 GOP seats and retake the House majority, and to resist future attacks on the law.
“This is an ongoing concern,” said Rep. Frank Pallone, New Jersey Democrat.
Democrats say defending Obamacare has already helped them to victories in special federal elections and in state races over the last year, winning governorships in Virginia and New Jersey, a number of statehouse campaigns and a Senate seat in Alabama, and a House seat in Pennsylvania.
Among the Obamacare-inspired targets moving forward are Senate candidates Martha McSally in Arizona and Marsha Blackburn in Tennessee, both of whom are House members who voted to repeal Obamacare last year.
House Majority PAC, a group promoting Democrats, kicked off this week with an ad slamming Rep. Claudia Tenney, New York Republican, that says the repeal bill would have slapped an “age tax” on older Americans by letting insurers share them up to five times what they charge younger ones.
Ms. Tenney, whose campaign couldn’t be reached for comment, is facing a Democratic challenge from state Assemblyman Anthony Brindisi in a race that the Cook Political Report calls a “tossup.”
Darrell West, director of governance studies for the Brookings Institution, said the ad campaign “plays to new sentiments among the general public” about Obamacare, which is polling better than ever.
“For Republicans, Obamacare is tricky because they tried to repeal it but failed,” he said. “That is disappointing to their base and makes them look like they can’t pass important legislation even when they control the House and the Senate, and have a Republican president. Blaming the Senate doesn’t help their public messaging.”
But many House Republicans see their vote as a promise kept, not a failure. They blame the Senate for scuttling their efforts.
GOP operatives say if anything, health care will trip up Democrats who are divided over whether to patch up a wobbly Obamacare program or push for a government-run, single-payer system.
“Democrats ruined the American health care system as we knew it when they forced Obamacare on the country,” said Jesse Hunt, spokesman for the The National Republican Campaign Committee. “Now the progressive wing has hijacked the party and forced candidates to back a single-payer health care plan or face their ire in a primary.”
For his part, Mr. Trump insists he is chalking up wins after “repeal and replace” fumbles last year.
His administration is finalizing rules that will let younger, healthier consumers find cheaper options than what’s offered on Obamacare’s exchanges, and it’s letting states that expanded Medicaid require able-bodied adults to work, volunteer or take education classes as a condition of there benefits.
Most notably, the GOP scrapped the unpopular mandate to hold insurance or pay a tax.
“We repealed the core of disastrous Obamacare,” Mr. Trump said in January. “The individual mandate is now gone.”
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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