Trump Says ‘I Understand Health Care Now’ As He Doubles Down On Pledge To Fight Obamacare

On Wednesday, Donald Trump re-affirmed his administration’s decision to fight against the Affordable Care Act. According to CBS News, the president says that he understands the vast complexity of health care now, and he vowed that the Republican party would have a “far better” plan than the current law.

During a press conference in the Oval Office, Trump slammed Obamacare and Democrats while claiming that he understood and would fix the health care system in the U.S.

“I mean it 100 percent, I understand health care now, especially very well. A lot of people don’t understand it, we are going to be, the Republicans, the party of great health care,” he said. “The Democrats have, they’ve let you down, they came up with Obamacare, it’s terrible.”

“If the Supreme Court rules that Obamacare is out, we’ll have a plan that is far better than Obamacare,” he added.

Many Republicans were surprised on Monday when the White House backed the legal effort to strike down the ACA, seeing the issue as a way for Democrats to potentially gain seats in the Senate during the 2020 election. Health care was a large factor on voters’ minds during the last election and some credit the issue with driving Republican’s loss of the House in 2018.

On Tuesday, the president declared that the Republican party would become the party of health care.

“Let me just tell you exactly what my message is: The Republican Party will soon be known as the party of health care. You watch,” he said.

Last night I spoke until we closed down the Senate, reading 100 letters from people whose preexisting conditions would get them kicked off insurance w/o ACA. By announcing the repeal they actually became the party of “taking away people’s health care!” https://t.co/KMBFQY0Q3I

— Amy Klobuchar (@amyklobuchar) March 27, 2019

Republicans had tried and failed numerous times to repeal Obamacare and many Congressional leaders are hesitant to start the battle up again after they faced criticism for being unable to come up with a viable alternative to do away with the current system despite controlling both houses of Congress.

But those concerns didn’t sway the president, who doubled down on his belief that the entire system should be declared unconstitutional and replaced, calling it “too expensive” and premiums “too high.”

Neither Trump nor Republicans have provided specifics on what a new health care system would look like under the GOP philosophy.

All this comes after U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor ruled that Obamacare was unconstitutional in December, citing the fact that Republicans had passed a law overturning the individual insurance mandate. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals is now reviewing the lower court’s ruling, but many expect that the outcome likely won’t be finalized until the case is heard by the Supreme Court.