President Trump has asked a group of Republican senators to come up with a replacement for Obamacare, the president said Thursday.
The contingent of between four and five senators tasked with working on an alternative healthcare proposal includes Sens. John Barrasso of Wyoming, Rick Scott of Florida, and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Trump told reporters before departing the White House for a rally in Grand Rapids, Mich.
“They are going to work together, come up with something that’s really spectacular, maybe we will even get support in the House from Democrats,” Trump said. “But it’s going to be far better than Obamacare.”
Some Republican senators are demanding that the White House produce the proposal.
Following the 2016 presidential election, Republicans attempted to pass legislation repealing and replacing Obamacare, but a proposal known as “skinny” repeal ultimately failed in the GOP-led Senate.
GOP lawmakers then shifted their attention toward passing tax reform. The $1.5 trillion tax package, considered the president’s first major legislative achievement, repealed Obamacare’s individual mandate, which required people to have health insurance or pay a fine.
Trump on Tuesday vowed Republicans would become the “party of healthcare” and encouraged GOP senators to try to pass an Obamacare replacement plan again, though he did not say which proposals he supports.
The president acknowledged the GOP’s healthcare plan is still in the works and said lawmakers are in “no very great rush” due to a challenge to Obamacare pending in federal court. In December, a federal judge in Texas ruled the healthcare law is unconstitutional, though the ruling was appealed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
“If we win on the termination of Obamacare, we will have a plan that’s far better than Obamacare,” Trump said.
Though the details of an alternative to the healthcare law are unknown, Trump said it would provide protections for people with preexisting conditions.
“Obamacare has been a disaster,” he said. “We will take care of preexisting conditions better than they are taken care of now.”
