President Donald Trump told Republican senators lunching at the White House on Tuesday the House-passed health care reform bill he celebrated earlier this year was "Mean."
Trump made clear multiple times that he was pleased that the Senate negotiations appeared to be moving away from where the House version of the repeal and replace effort ended up, according to three sources familiar with the meeting.
Trump told the lawmakers that the House bill didn't go far enough in protecting individuals in the marketplace -- and appeared to use that as his rationale for why he has ambiguously called twice for the Senate to "Add more money" to the bill. Ref. CNN.
Donald Trump & Healthcare (Hover)
Four conservative Republican senators announced they opposed the GOP Senate leadership's health care bill as written.
Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah said in a joint statement they're "Not ready to vote for this bill."
Republicans can only lose two members of their 52-senator caucus to pass their proposal to repeal and replace Obamacare.
A number of other GOP senators are avoiding outright supporting the new health care bill unveiled by Republican leaders Thursday morning -- saying they need more time to read the fine print before taking a stand. Ref. CNN.
They can't do that. They spent too long telling their supporters that the ACA was basically the unholy brainchild of Hitler, Stalin and Satan, and was the source of every problem they could ever think of.
Turning around and treating the ACA as if it had so much as a scrap of merit would cost them a lot of support at this point.
Which is why I hate politics and could never be a politician. I mean, the ACA was clearly very flawed, but it could have been fixed and they could have taken credit. Oh, look what we did, we fixed what the Democrats messed up… now vote for us. Instead, they shoot off the countries proverbial nose to spite its face.