House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi trained her fire on President Trump’s new executive orders targeting Obamacare, saying the new president isn’t sincere in improving health coverage.
The California Democrat issued a statement Monday in response to an executive order Trump signed late Friday that directs federal agencies to not enforce parts of Obamacare such as the law’s individual mandate. On Sunday, Trump senior counselor Kellyanne Conway said that Trump shares the GOP’s goal of converting Medicaid into a state block-grant program.
Pelosi said that whoever advised Trump on “his nonsensical executive order targeting the [Affordable Care Act] did not understand the law, or does not care about the damage destroying the ACA will do to seniors and working families. I hope it’s the first, I fear it is both.”
She added that Conway’s statements on Medicaid “represent a horrible threat to the health security of seniors and working families across the nation.”
Pelosi’s comments come as Democrats and Republicans spar over the fate of former President Obama’s signature domestic achievement.
House and Senate committees are getting to work on crafting legislation to repeal the law via reconciliation, which lets the GOP bypass a filibuster in the Senate.
The effort has gotten severe pushback from Democrats who charge that repealing the law without an immediate replacement would result in millions of people on the individual marketplace losing their insurance.
Republicans counter that the individual market, which includes Obamacare’s exchanges and is for people that don’t buy insurance through their job, is already in shambles due to low enrollment and too many regulations.
Trump’s order directs federal agencies to waive any financial burden placed on any American under the Affordable Care Act, which could include not enforcing the law’s individual mandate penalty for not having insurance.
