A divided White House still offers little guidance on replacing Obamacare
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While leaving most of the detail work to lawmakers, top White House aides are divided on how dramatic an overhaul effort the party should pursue.
And the biggest wild card remains the president himself, who has devoted only a modest amount of time to the grinding task of mastering health-care policy but has repeatedly suggested that his sweeping new plan is nearly complete.
This conundrum will be on full display Monday, when Trump meets at the White House with some of the nation’s largest health insurers. The session, which will include top executives from Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Cigna and Humana,
is not expected to produce a major policy announcement. But it will provide an opportunity for one more important constituency to lobby the nation’s leader on an issue he has said is at the top of his agenda.
Democrats and their allies are already mobilizing supporters to hammer lawmakers about the possible impact of rolling back the ACA, holding more than 100 rallies across the country Saturday. And a new analysis for the National Governors Association that modeled the effect of imposing a cap on Medicaid spending — a key component of House Republicans’ strategy — provided Democrats with fresh ammunition because of its finding that the number of insured Americans could fall significantly.
Trump, for his part, continues to express confidence about his administration’s ostensible plan.
He suggested Wednesday that it would be out within a few weeks.
“So we’re doing the health care — again, moving along very well — sometime during the month of March, maybe mid- to early March, we’ll be submitting something that I think people will be very impressed by,” he told reporters during a budget meeting in the Roosevelt Room.
Yet some lawmakers, state leaders and policy experts who have discussed the matter with either Trump or his top aides say
the administration is largely delegating the development of an ACA substitute to Capitol Hill. The president, who attended part of a lengthy health-care policy session his aides held at Mar-a-Lago a week ago,
appears more interested in brokering specific questions, such as how to negotiate drug prices, than in steering the plan’s drafting.
“The legislative branch, the House first and foremost, is providing the policy,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), who noted that
the White House lacks “a big policy shop” and that Price and some key principals just recently got in place. Seema Verma, whom Trump has nominated to head the Centers for Medicare and Medi*caid Services, should play a key role in any reform effort if she is confirmed.
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