President Donald Trump implied Friday that a replacement for Obamacare would cover more people than the law currently does.
During a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference Friday, Trump said the Affordable Care Act “covers very few people.”
“Obamacare covers very few people. And remember, deduct from the number all of the people that had great health care that they loved, that was taken away from them,” he said. “Millions of people were very happy with their health care. They had their doctor. They had their plan.”
“Remember the lie? 28 times. ‘You can keep your doctor. You can keep your plan.’ Over and over and over again you heard it. So we’re going to repeal and replace Obamacare,” Trump said.
The Congressional Budget Office, in an analysis published last month, estimated that repealing the Affordable Care Act would result in an increase of 32 million Americans without health insurance by 2026. They based the analysis on a 2015 bill to repeal the law, passed by Congress and vetoed by President Barack Obama, which would have immediately eliminated the individual mandate and phased out Medicaid expansion and subsidies to people buying insurance through the marketplace over two years.
Trump also repeated his now-frequent line that the most prudent decision, politically, would be to let the law stand as it is.
“I tell them, from a purely political standpoint, the single best thing we can do is nothing. Let it implode completely,” Trump said, referring to House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price.
“It’s already imploding completely. The carriers are leaving. I mean, it’s a disaster. Two years, don’t do anything. The Democrats will come to us and beg for help. Beg. And it’s their problem. But it’s not the right thing to do for the American people. It’s not the right thing to do,” he concluded.
