A former adviser to President Obama on his healthcare law predicts Republicans will soon stop talking about Obamacare.
“I think you’re going to hear some amazing silence,” Ezekiel Emanuel said Tuesday at an annual conference hosted by the National Council for Behavioral Health.
“I really do think the healthcare act will not be a dominant issue [in 2016],” he said. “I think it will be integrated into the fabric of the healthcare system.”
Emanuel — who advised the White House on healthcare policy as the Affordable Care Act was being written — was referring to Republicans in Congress, who have repeatedly tried to repeal it over the last few years. But now that the law is mostly implemented, Emanuel said it’s been so successful that the GOP is running out of things to criticize.
“It’s here to stay,” he said. “It’s restructuring our healthcare system.”
But the newly GOP-led Senate is currently considering whether to use budget reconciliation rules to repeal the law, which would allow them to pass it with just 51 votes instead of 60. President Obama would block such a move, but Republicans hope to lay the groundwork to ditch the law should they win the White House next year.
And a poll released Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that Americans remain sharply divided over the law, although there’s some evidence that support for it could be slowly inching up.
