President Donald Trump doesn’t appear to be completely confident Republicans will get enough GOP Senators on board to pass the Senate health care bill, according to comments he made during an energy roundtable discussion with governors on Wednesday.
The President said Obamacare is “essentially dead” and called it a “headache for everybody” and a “nightmare for many,” before praising Republicans’ latest Affordable Care Act repeal plan that he wasn’t fully confident would pass.
“So we have a plan that if we get it approved, it’s very tough. Every state is different, every senator is different. But I have to tell you, the Republican senators had a really impressive meeting yesterday at the White House. We had close to 50 of them, we have 52, but we need almost all of them. That’s never easy,” he said. “I think we’re going to get at least very close, and I think we’re going to get it over the line.”
He said the meeting of GOP senators at the White House Tuesday — after Republican leaders announced they were going to delay the vote on the new health care bill — had a “really great feeling” and said he thinks the bill has “a chance to be a great health care at a reasonable cost.”
“We’ll see what happens. We’re working very hard, we have given ourselves a little bit more time to make it perfect,” he said. “We’re sending a lot of it back to the states, where it belongs, and this will be something really special if we can get it done. Always tough. It’s probably the toughest subject from the standpoint of approval because every state is different, every state has different needs.”
When asked about the plan to make significant cuts to Medicaid expansion, the President told reporters, “It’s gonna be great. It will be great for everybody.”
