Republicans may have bit off more than they can chew by making repealing the Affordable Care Act their first priority in 2017, a top White Houser adviser said Tuesday.
Valerie Jarrett, senior adviser to President Obama, said on CNN Republicans are finding out that it’s going to be hard to replace the outgoing president’s signature law. She said the law is built in such a way that repealing unpopular parts of it are inevitably going to take popular parts out too.
“If you care about covering everybody with a pre-existing condition then you really need a requirement that everybody buy health insurance,” she said. “It’s very difficult when you start to break apart the pieces.”
Jarrett said the White House is staying optimistic about the future of the law, though Republicans have campaigned on repealing it for the last eight years and President-elect Trump has promised to repeal it.
“I hope that the future of the Affordable Care Act, called Obamacare, is positive,” she said. “There’s so much in it that is positive that I would hate to have those benefits taken away from the American people.”
Jarrett said Obama would speak to the nation Tuesday from Chicago in much the same manner that he’s spoken to it during his time in office, focusing on hope and optimism for the future.
She said Obama plans to run through his accomplishments while in office and tell stories about some of the people he’s met along the way. He wants to leave the scene as he entered it, as a positive influence, she said.
“There’s just a lot to feel very positive about and he wants to reflect very briefly on the progress that we’ve made,” he said.
