Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff Marc Short said Wednesday that the White House would release a new health care plan “this year.”
But Short, who previously served as the Trump White House’s director of legislative affairs and then briefly left the administration, implied it could be a while until the public sees Trump’s latest attempt to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act.
“The President will be putting forward plans this year that we hope to introduce into Congress,” Short told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “The reality is that the court decision is likely not until the summer of 2020, by the time it would reach the Supreme Court.”
The “court decision” is a reference to the lawsuit from several Republican state attorneys general seeking to scrub Obamacare from the books entirely. On Monday, the Trump administration signaled its approval of the effort by abandoning any defense of the law in court.
Earlier Wednesday, Trump said that “if” the Supreme Court ultimately strikes down Obamacare, “we will have a plan that’s far better than Obamacare.”
The President’s comment seemed to ignore Republicans’ repeated unsuccessful attempts, in the last Congress, to repeal Obamacare and replace it with their own health care priorities.
VP Pence's chief of staff Marc Short: "The President will be putting forward plans this year that we hope to introduce into Congress." pic.twitter.com/D43c5rG7da
— Matt Shuham (@mattshuham) March 27, 2019
It presumably involves pushing poor sick people off of tall buildings (but it will have a much friendlier name to hide that fact).
What’s to debut? Doesn’t Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society and/or ALEC have it posted online already? I mean, that’s all he’s going to fucking do…adopt what they tell him to and claim it as his own so that it’s part of his brand and garners his wild-eyed idiot base’s mindless support.
I guess 2019 will be “about two weeks” long, then. Get back to us when you have that marvy new plan ready for its debutante ball, Mr. Clean.
The best Republican plan is the ACA that is why both Clinton and Obama adopted variations of it. America needs a Democratic plan that really does help all of the people and not just entrenched insurance companies.
It makes me nervous when they send Voldemort out to promise a new health care plan.