Day 797: GOP admits they ‘don’t have’ a healthcare plan after Trump tries, again, to gut Obamacare

Donald Trump made a stunningly fast and poor decision earlier this week: he told the DOJ — against departmental policy and previous actions — to stop defending the Affordable Care Act entirely. While the constitutionality of the law winds its way through federal court yet again, Trump is having the DOJ simply not defend any provisions of it anymore.

If Trump has his way, millions of Americans will lose healthcare coverage and the fallout will be entirely on his shoulders.

He had the chance to move on from the debacle of trying and failing to repeal Obamacare in 2016 and 2017. The utter lack of a realistic plan was exposed over and over again as a Republican-led House and Senate still couldn’t get a law passed. That led to Democrats to easily flipping the House, in addition to picking up state seats and governorships in purple and red states around the country in 2018.

Now, by needlessly bringing the issue up again, Trump is in a lose-lose situation. If federal courts overturn the law, the nation will look to Republicans to fix the mess they created. If federal courts don’t overturn the law, Trump will have waded into judicial waters and lost on this issue yet again.

The GOP isn’t even hiding from the fact that they have no healthcare plan at all right now and were taken by surprise by Trump’s instruction to the DOJ.

“We need a plan and right now we don’t have one,” said one frustrated Republican senator, who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “I’m not going to just throw this to the whims of our creativity.”

Other lawmakers have tried and failed in the last few days to steer Trump away from the idea, telling him the anti-ACA push is bad for his own reelection campaign.

“[Trump] knows that he made a mistake, but he’s dug in now,” said person close to the president.

The last thing elected Republicans want is another fight over Obamacare.

“We’re going to be involved in health but most of it is going to be very, very bipartisan, unlike [a fight over the ACA], which would not be very bipartisan,” said Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the leader of the Senate Finance Committee.

Even the lawmakers closest to Trump, including Freedom Caucus Chair Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), acknowledged to reporters that Republicans, still recovering from the toxic fallout from failed repeal attempts in 2017, would be better off tackling more manageable goals like drug pricing reform going into 2020.

By restarting a healthcare fight, Trump has only revealed just how inept the GOP has been on this issue and continues to be on it. The Trump plan seems to be to keep trying to get rid of the ACA at all costs, despite its growing popularity and healthcare being one of the lightning rod issues helping Democrats in 2018.

797 days in, 665 to go

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