Trump rekindled the long-running political conflict over health care last week when he ordered his Justice Department to shift its position on a Texas lawsuit seeking to invalidate parts of the Affordable Care Act, agreeing with U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor’s ruling that the law itself is unconstitutional and should be scrapped entirely.
The president then urged Senate Republicans to come up with a “spectacular” health-care proposal to replace the Affordable Care Act, which was enacted under the Obama administration.
“We are going to be the Republicans, the party of great health care,” Trump told reporters last week. “The Democrats, they let you down. They came up with Obamacare and it is terrible.”
Most congressional Republicans, however, are in no mood to return to the battlefield. Although they had fiercely opposed the law since 2010, it gradually became more popular with voters and was considered a chief factor in last November’s Democratic victories that cost the GOP control of the House of Representatives.
In the House elections, health care ranked as the top issue for voters. Those voters preferred Democratic candidates by a striking margin of 75 percent to 23 percent, according to exit polls published by CNN. Democrats won 40 seats and captured the majority after eight years.
Republicans, on the other hand, have been eager to run against “Medicare for all,” a favorite proposal of progressive Democrats that Trump referred to in his tweets, and equally eager to avoid the Obamacare debate after the trouble it caused them last fall.
“Dear GOP: When Democrats are setting themselves ablaze by advocating for the destruction of American health care, try to resist the temptation of asking them to pass the kerosene,” tweeted Josh Holmes, a former chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
The White House House had no immediate comment late Monday night.
This article provided by Bloomberg News.