The House GOP plan to repeal and replace parts of the Affordable Care Act would have gone down in flames and between 50 and 80 Republicans would have voted against it, Michigan GOP Rep. Justin Amash said Monday.
MLive reported Amash told a town hall meeting in Cedar Spings, Mich., that the American Health Care Act would have flopped spectacularly if it had been brought to a vote. Amash said the conservative House Freedom Caucus wouldn’t have been the only group of Republicans opposed.
“It would have been really embarrassing,” Amash said.
Amash was one of the most prominent detractors of the bill, branding it “Obamacare 2.0” and refusing to budge from his critical stance even in the face of President Trump’s threat to run a primary challenger against him.
Amash said he wants a bipartisan solution to healthcare in the United States and he believes the Affordable Care Act needs to go. However, it can’t be rushed through in a matter of weeks as House Republican leadership aimed to do.
“Let’s start over in a bipartisan way,” he said. “We should have worked with Democrats from the very beginning. At the end of the day, you cannot pass legislation … that affects so many people and not have it be bipartisan.”
