In the last six years, Republicans voted to repeal Obamacare more than five dozen times. Most were ceremonial gestures. Only one made it to the president’s desk before being vetoed. But after a landslide victory, the GOP finally gets a bite at the Affordable Care Act apple.
With control of both chambers, Republicans have the muscle and the mandate needed to repeal the law. But conservative dreams of a market-based replacement could quickly turn into nightmares of socialized medicine. At this point, Trumpcare could go either way.
On the campaign trail, Trump promised that he would repeal Obamacare, “very, very quickly.” It appears that Majority Leader Mitch McConnell got that memo. Less than 24 hours after the election, McConnell echoed the nominee, saying he’d be “shocked if we didn’t move forward to keep our commitment to the American people.”
The path to repeal is simple. Through budget reconciliation, Republicans could wipe out Obama’s healthcare legacy during Trump’s first 100 days. But a replacement package is more mysterious.
Fixing Obamacare wasn’t a top talking point for Trump. He latched onto the issue toward the end of the presidential race. While the president-elect has some generic conservative prescriptions on his website currently, his past statements are more concrete. And those Trumpcare trials weren’t promising.
The New York businessman is really into socialized medicine. After winning New Hampshire, the Washington Examiner described “Trumpcare [as] a mixture of socialism and incoherence.” That could be a silver lining in Trump’s presidency for Democrats.
Though the Republican president-elect talks about repealing Obama’s marquee accomplishment, he regularly sings the praises of universal healthcare. From the beginning, Trump proposed a single payer system, citing Canada and Scotland as winning case studies. As recently as this January, he sang the praises of centralized medicine to David Letterman.
The threat isn’t that Trump would craft a healthcare system to the left of Obamacare. Instead, Trumpcare could become Obamacare lite if Republicans don’t move quickly. And for all their talk about repealing Obamacare, after six years the GOP doesn’t have a concrete alternative. The best they have is a grab bag of reforms repackaged in House Speaker Paul Ryan’s Better Way Agenda.
If Trump’s a man of his convictions, that could be a problem for Republicans.
Philip Wegmann is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
