Ahead of a meeting with President Trump Wednesday night, Sen. Ted Cruz signaled that Republicans in Congress have a long way to go to fix the Trump-backed House Obamacare replacement bill and seemingly offered himself up as an emissary to the president.
Asked what he would be talking with Trump about tonight during a dinner that will include Cruz’s wife and children, the Texas Republican noted that the replacement bill needs to be fixed.
Cruz provided little insight on whether the dinner amounted to an opportunity to bury the hatchet with Trump after an acrimonious campaign, saying only that he is “very much looking forward” to the opportunity for the two to meet over a meal in a private setting.
“Several weeks ago President Trump called and invited me and my family to come over and join him for dinner,” Cruz told reporters Wednesday. “And so Heidi and I and our two girls will be joining the president and Melania for dinner tonight, and we’re very much looking forward to it.”
“It is principally a social dinner, but I am sure the conversation will turn to the repeal of Obamacare,” the Texas Republican said.
Cruz made no reference to the vicious assaults he and Trump launched against each other during the primary, which included Trump’s unfounded accusations that Cruz’s father was involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Trump also tweeted a side-by-side photo of Heidi Cruz and Melanie Trump with that appeared to attack Heidi Trump’s looks with the tagline: “A picture is worth a thousand words.”
Trump had yet to take the tweet down as of Wednesday, reporters have pointed out.
After the incidents, Cruz pointedly refused to endorse Trump at the GOP convention, even though Trump gave him a speaking role at the confab. Since Trump’s election, Cruz has tamped down his criticism, even offering generous praise last week after Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress.
Cruz said the speech offered a “positive, unifying vision for the country.”
In the two days since House Republicans unveiled their Obamacare replacement bill, which Trump is pressing conservative Republicans to coalesce around, Cruz has issued harsh criticism but also has said it “can be fixed.”
“I have serious concerns about the House bill as drafted — I do not believe the House bill as currently drafted would pass the Senate,” he said. “But I also believe it can be fixed. We can make it better, and I am working closely with House members and senators and the administration to do just that.”
His main focus in helping Republicans “fix” the latest version of a replacement is to stop premiums from “skyrocketing,” he said.
“The average family’s premiums have increased over $5,000 a year, and we’re paying more for lousier coverage, higher deductibles and fewer doctors and smaller networks,” he said. “We’ve got to fix that.”
“The test for success will be lowering premiums and making health care more affordable,” he said.
He also wants to repeal all the “insurance mandates” except possibly the one prohibiting the discrimination against people with preexisting conditions, and allow people to purchase insurance across state lines, something left out of the House bill.
Cruz is particularly concerned about the Medicaid provisions in the House bill that he argued would encourage more people “to be jammed onto a system that is failing under its own weight.”
