White House deputy press secretary Sarah Sanders said Tuesday the White House has never been concerned about the timeline for passing a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare, but is concerned with getting a bill that “helps the most Americans.”
“The president is committed — he’s said and all the members of the administration have said repeatedly — to repealing and replacing Obamacare, working with the Senate, working with the House, making sure we get the best bill,” Sanders told reporters Tuesday. “For us, it’s never been about the timeline, but about getting the best piece of legislation that helps the most Americans. That’s what we’re continuing to do day in, day out.”
Sanders’ comments come just hours after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell decided to delay a vote on the Senate GOP’s healthcare bill, called the Better Care Reconciliation Act.
Senate Republican leaders planned to hold a vote on the proposal this week, before members departed for the week-long July 4th recess, but pushed the vote back when it became clear too many Republican senators opposed the legislation for it to pass.
President Trump invited Republican senators to the White House on Tuesday afternoon to discuss the way forward on the healthcare bill. Sanders said Trump’s commitment to getting the “best piece of legislation that helps the most Americans” sparked the meeting.
“That’s the reason the president has asked members of the Senate to come here today, so that they can talk through that, so that they can figure out the best way to move the ball forward,” Sanders said.
After the Senate’s healthcare proposal was released last week, four conservative senators immediately came out in opposition to the plan as it’s currently written. Nevada Sen. Dean Heller became the fifth Republican to oppose it soon after.
Additional members began to have doubts about the plan after the Congressional Budget Office released its analysis of the bill Monday.
The CBO found that the Senate GOP’s plan would reduce the deficit by $321 billion, but would cause 22 million more people to become uninsured by 2026.
The nonpartisan agency also estimated that premiums would increase 20 percent in 2018 and 10 percent in 2019, but would decrease 30 percent by 2020.
Republican leaders and the White House disagreed with the CBO’s initial analysis, and Sanders said that while the agency predicts budgetary impacts well, it falls short at predicting coverage, as evidenced by its analysis of Obamacare’s coverage impacts.
“The CBO is a budget office, and while it does very well at predicting things on budget, whether it’s revenue or spending,” Sanders said, “I don’t think it does a great job, and I think the administration has been clear and consistent that it doesn’t always agree that it doesn’t always do a great job predicting coverage.”
