Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Wednesday evening said the Democratic Party will not cooperate with President Trump if he attempts to repeal and replace Obamacare.
“Our position remains unchanged: drop repeal, stop undermining our healthcare system, and we will certainly sit down and talk about ways to improve the Affordable Care Act,” Schumer said.
After backing away from healthcare reform last month after the House had to pull a vote on Republican leaders’ Obamacare repeal plan because of insufficient support, Trump said leaving Obamacare intact would mean Democrats would get blamed for the imploding bill. However, Trump on Wednesday said he has had a change of heart about repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act.
“The longer I’m behind this desk and you have Obamacare, the more I would own it,” Trump said in a Wall Street Journal interview from the Oval Office.
Trump said he has uncovered a way to change the political optics of the situation in a way that would give Republicans a path to win the stalled partisan battle and do away with former President Barack Obama’s legacy domestic achievement.
Trump is considering going “the other way,” which would entail withholding payments to insurers in an attempt to twist Democrats’ arms into reforming the policy.
“This cynical strategy will fail,” Schumer said. “President Trump is threatening to hold hostage healthcare for millions of Americans, many of whom voted for him, to achieve a political goal of repeal that would take healthcare away from millions more.”
House Republicans sued the Obama administration, claiming the White House was not allowed to pay insurers the payments to help offset out-of-pocket medical expenses for lower-income people enrolled in Obamacare, because the payments were not funded through congressional appropriations.
In 2016, a federal judge ruled against the government but allowed the payments to continue while the White House appealed. Once Trump entered the Oval Office in January, he immediately requested a delay in the case.
The administration has said that it has not decided how it will handle the payments. Healthcare groups, including payers and providers, sent a letter to Trump and to congressional leaders on Wednesday asking them to take “quick action” on the matter and warning them of the dire consequences of not administering the payments, including increasing the number of uninsured people and causing premiums to rise.
“I don’t want people to get hurt … what I think should happen — and will happen — is the Democrats will start calling me and negotiating,” Trump said. “Schumer should be calling me up and begging me to help him save Obamacare.”
