Trump less likely than ever to make positive health-insurance changes
President Donald Trump on Wednesday in the Oval Office. Credit: AP/Susan Walsh
Expect the nation's health-insurance system to remain adrift.
During the 2016 campaign, President Donald Trump promised a great health care plan with coverage for everybody. He joined in a pre-existing GOP chorus for ripping up the current system known as Obamacare. Extravagant promises, but no workable plan, followed. That's where matters will remain indefinitely.
Two years passed with Trump's party controlling both houses of Congress. But "repeal-and-replace" never occurred in the form of the required legislative agreement. It ended up more like "ignite and ignore." Early on, as is his habit,Trump blamed everyone else involved for the failure.
Now the chances for such a sweeping bill are dashed at least until 2021, with real negotiations among the players as unlikely as ever.
Democrats now controlling the House of Representatives won't bail out Trump's vague health-policy promises any more than the GOP-run House knuckled under to President Barack Obama.
None of the proposed Democratic fixes to the status quo — ranging from "Medicare for all" to incremental changes in the current law — will meet the approval of the president or the Senate's Republican majority.
Don't expect Trump to step in to broker the details of a needed deal.
The Kaiser Family Foundation earlier this month cited polling that found 54 percent of Americans holding a "favorable view" of the current Affordable Care Act, higher than before.
On the heels of a Texas judge's key ruling, Trump is now backing the rather passive strategy of letting the courts repeal the ACA. But just as when he forced a partial shutdown to get billions from Congress for his border "wall," the president is putting Sen. Mitch McConnell's GOP majority and Rep. Kevin McCarthy's Republican minority on the spot with little impact.
If the repeal is upheld, creating a void in the law, both McConnell and McCarthy — in tandem with Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) — might have to define and agree on whether and how to insure people whose options have been cut.
Or they could collectively find a way to kick the can down the road again.
Reports spread at the Capitol on Wednesday that McCarthy told Trump on the phone that his strategy of backing a court-imposed repeal made no sense. By the end of last week McConnell made it clear he wouldn't take the lead on a Trump health-care proposal if one existed.
“I look forward to seeing what the president is proposing and what he can work out with the speaker," McConnell said (emphasis added).
Thus the facts mocked another Trump-promoted fantasy — that "the Republican Party will soon be known as the party of health care."
And so the health-insurance gridlock lives on. For all the president's resonant campaign complaints about an ACA created by and for insurance companies, the status quo prevails well into his tenure with no sign of a concerted effort to change it.
Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
