You have to give President Trump credit; he’s not avoiding the truth. That’s assuming he realized what he just said.
In a softball interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Trump acknowledged that the Republican health care overhaul will actually hurt his core supporters the most.
“Counties that voted for you, middle class and working class counties, would do far less well under this bill,” Carlson said.
“Yeah. Oh, I know that. It’s very preliminary,” Trump said.
Carlson was referencing a Bloomberg analysis, which showed that middle class and working class counties that voted for Trump will fare poorly under the current Republican healthcare reform proposal.
“It seems like maybe this isn’t consistent with the message of the last election,” Carlson said.
“No. A lot of things aren’t consistent,” Trump countered. “But these are going to be negotiated. We’ve got to go to the Senate. We’ll see what happens in the Senate.”
It was a bold admission from Trump, who repeatedly promised during the 2016 Election that he would simultaneously repeal and replace Obamacare, while ensuring coverage for every American that would be better and more affordable. And it’s a promise that a large number of Americans seem expect him to uphold. Even a new Fox News poll shows that a majority of Republicans are unhappy with the current healthcare overhaul lumbering its way through Congress.
The latest Congressional Budget Office analysis of the House Republican plan actually says that premiums will rise for most Americans while more than 20 million fewer people will be insured within a decade of the plan’s implementation.
In fairness, the bill still has to go through the Senate, where it’s all but certain to change. And Trump has been told that two separate amendments will add in some of his more popular proposals, such as allowing purchasing of plans across state lines. But there’s no guarantee any of those preferable components will see the light of day. And even if they do, we don’t know that they will be measurably better than the current national healthcare system. What we do know is that if House Speaker gets his version of the Republican healthcare bill through the system, he and his team will have little to no incentive to improve the proposal in any way, which will be bad news for just about everyone, including Trump himself.