In a speech marking the failure of his party’s bill to repeal and replace Obamacare in the early morning hours of Friday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said it was time for the Senate “to move on” from its current reform efforts.
McConnell may be able to dictate that strategy in the upper chamber, but in primary races across the country, where candidates are forced to earn the votes of constituents suffering from high premiums, those efforts are likely to remain salient.
“You keep working on it until you solve it,” said Kevin Nicholson, who this week became the first Republican to formally announce his candidacy to challenge Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis.
When asked whether he plans to hammer healthcare reform on the campaign trail, Nicholson, a Marine veteran and businessman, told the Washington Examiner: “American healthcare is always going to be an issue, because it’s an incredibly important part of people’s lives, and Obamacare is not a sustainable situation, so it has to be solved.”
“You continue to work to address the problem until it’s solved,” the political newcomer emphasized.
“Obamacare is not a sustainable system,” Nicholson repeated. “It’s not going to implode on itself, it is imploding on itself. You have states losing health insurance carriers, you have premiums skyrocketing, and you have quality of care dropping. That’s not sustainable.”
In states such as Wisconsin, where the Affordable Care Act has created serious problems for consumers, it’s hard to imagine Republican candidates ignoring the legislation. In an interview with the Washington Examiner on Thursday, Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wis., said Baldwin’s inaction on healthcare reform was a “noose around her neck politically.”
“Our families are paying almost a 100 percent more in premiums, and she has done nothing; she hasn’t lifted one finger to help fix this problem,” Duffy explained.
As my colleague Philip Wegmann reported earlier Friday, Rep. Mo Brooks, a Republican Senate candidate in Alabama, revealed his plans to “[make] the failure a referendum” in his race as well, calling for McConnell to step aside in an interview on Friday.
Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
