After Senate fails to repeal ACA, Trump says ‘let Obamacare implode’

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump blamed three Republicans and Democrats on Friday for dealing a serious blow to his legislative agenda with the Senate’s failure to repeal portions of the Affordable Care Act.

Trump immediately took to his Twitter account following the 49-51 vote early Friday morning that doomed his campaign pledge to repeal Obamacare and replace it with a GOP plan.

“As I said from the beginning, let ObamaCare implode, then deal. Watch!” Trump tweeted.

In a speech to law enforcement officers in New York, Trump said to applause: “Let Obamacare implode, and then do it. I turned out to be right. Let Obamacare implode.”

The defeat was a third for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who failed to galvanize his caucus around another broad repeal bill, as well as a GOP-crafted health care replacement plan.

McConnell called the most recent defeat “a disappointing moment.” The leader said the Senate would now move on to other legislative priorities while talks continued on a way forward on health care.

No Democrats were asked to join, or were part of, GOP discussions on health care reform and repeal legislation in the Senate.

“Now I think it’s appropriate to ask, what are their ideas? It’ll be interesting to see what they suggest as the way forward,” McConnell said, adding that he would not support “bailing out insurance companies with no thought of any kind of reform.”

Heller votes yes

Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., voted for the repeal measure because it “protected coverage for our most vulnerable and provided relief to many hardworking Nevadans by repealing the most onerous provision of Obamacare, the individual mandate.”

A member of the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over aspects of health care law, Heller said he would work “with my colleagues on bipartisan solutions to improve our broken health care system.”

Rep. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., who announced she will seek the Democratic nomination to challenge Heller in 2018, called Heller’s vote to repeal Obamacare “dishonest.”

She said Heller had promised at a Las Vegas news conference that he wouldn’t vote for a measure that takes health care from hundreds of thousands of Nevadans. “Last night he voted to do just that.”

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., credited citizens for killing the bill.

“In the dead of the night, Senate Republicans tried and failed to rip away the health care of hundreds of thousands of Nevadans and millions of Americans,” she said.

“Their failed attempt is the result of overwhelming public opposition — your calls, letters, protests and tweets put Republicans on notice,” Cortez Masto said.

The drama of the demise of the GOP-crafted health care bills in the Senate began earlier this week, when Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., traveled to Washington to vote despite a recent diagnosis of aggressive brain cancer.

McCain calls for bipartisan solution

During an impassioned speech from the Senate floor, McCain called for a bipartisan solution to the health care system and to fix the flaws of Obamacare, which was passed without a single GOP vote in 2010.

He excoriated both parties for their partisan approach, and took a jab at Trump, who had badgered senators with veiled threats about political consequences for failing to vote for the repeal bill.

McCain, one of a few Trump critics in the GOP, told senators they were not the president’s subordinates, “we are his equals.”

Following the demise of the broad repeal and the health care bill, the Senate took up a “skinny” repeal bill that removed several mandates but kept Obamacare largely intact.

Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, were openly against repeal and favored a bipartisan approach to health care reform because of the bill’s impacts on rural communities and populations.

Murkowski said she was ready to work with colleagues — “all of them” — to reform the health care system.

McCain signaled Thursday during a news conference that he, too, was not in favor of the bill or the process.

McCain said Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, had concerns about the legislation.

McCain later cast the third vote that killed the bill, denying Republicans a simple majority.

Appeasing centrists, conservatives

Republicans, who have voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act for the past seven years, are no closer to crafting legislation that appeases centrists and conservatives in their party.

Several conservatives voted to move the skinny bill forward in order to strip out more Obamacare mandates and taxes in a conference committee with the House.

Centrists, like Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., feared House leaders would just pass the skinny bill and move it to Trump to sign into law, denying them the opportunity to amend the bill with a provision that created block grants for states and flexibility to spend those funds on programs they chose.

That amendment was being written by Graham, Heller and Sen. Bill Cassidy. R-La.

That measure could form the basis of new bipartisan efforts to reform Obamacare moving forward.

The American Medical Association urged quick bipartisan congressional attention to “the shortcomings in the Affordable Care Act.”

“The first priority should be to stabilize the individual marketplace to achieve the goal of providing access to quality, affordable health coverage for more Americans,” said Dr. David Barbe, AMA president

Contact Gary Martin at 202-662-7390 or gmartin@reviewjournal.com. Follow @garymartindc on Twitter.