House and Senate Democrats said Tuesday they would be willing to work on health insurance reform but only if Republicans withdraw a proposal that would also repeal Obamacare.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., made a hard offer to President Trump, Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
“If President Trump and Speaker Ryan and Majority Leader McConnell said we are taking repeal off the table, we would have a lot of people willing to sit down and improve the ACA, not repeal it,” he said.
“I have a lot of ideas, so do many of my colleagues in the House and the Senate,” Schumer said at a press conference featuring advocates of the current law. “But if you repeal it first you are going to do huge damage and have nothing to replace it with. We are willing to make improvements.”
Democrats are on their second day of a media blitz condemning the GOP plan in the wake of a Congressional Budget Office report that predicted 24 million fewer people would have health insurance in the next decade under the GOP plan, in large part because the individual mandate would be scrapped.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., a chief architect of the troubled Affordable Care Act, staunchly defended her work when she was asked what improvements and compromises she would be willing to accept for Obamacare.
“There hasn’t been a perfect bill,” Pelosi said. “Does anyone know of one?”
The insurance marketplace established under Obamacare is collapsing and premiums and deductibles are skyrocketing.
Pelosi blamed the problems under the current law on Republicans for “making false representations and misrepresentations about the bill.” But she added, “We can always subject any legislation we pass to scrutiny in terms of its implementation.”
Schumer seemed more eager to strike a deal. He pointed out Republicans appear to lack the support for their plan, which would phase out Medicaid expansion and eliminate Obamacare’s taxes and mandate. Democrats, Schumer pledged, would not provide a single vote in favor of it.
But the prospects of a real negotiation seem slim. Republicans are moving quickly to take down major pieces of the law, while Democrats are on the opposite side of many in the GOP on many aspects of health insurance reform.
Democrats, for example, want Medicaid expansion to be accepted in all 50 states, not phased out.
Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., the Granite State’s former governor who stood alongside Schumer, said Democrats needed to push for expanded Medicaid.
“Why in heaven’s name would we compromise about it? Hassan said. “We need right now to stop talking about repealing.”
