President Trump’s daily morning tweetstorm contained the usual gibberish, including his take on Morning Joe‘s reaction to his unhinged tweets about Mika’s looks. Trump tweeted, “I said no!” again and “bad show,” which isn’t worth parsing. Elsewhere in his thoughts, he made a significant backtrack on healthcare without consideration of the consequences. Trump called upon Congress to immediately repeal Obamacare and then replace it whenever the Senate GOP manages to pull together a bill that will pass.
If Republican Senators are unable to pass what they are working on now, they should immediately REPEAL, and then REPLACE at a later date!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 30, 2017
This tweet runs contrary to statements that he made in January prior to inauguration. At that time, he insisted that the repeal-replace should be a coordinated process: “It will be essentially simultaneously. The same day or the same week … could be the same hour.” He also acknowledged how there simply shouldn’t be a gap that leaves people without insurance. “I feel that repeal and replace have to be together, for, very simply, I think that the Democrats should want to fix Obamacare,” he said. “They cannot live with it, and they have to go together.”
So, why is Trump tweeting about healthcare when the Senate GOP still has lots of revisions to do after the Fourth of July holiday? An Axios report indicates that, on Thursday, Health Secretary Tom Price held a very negative meeting with White House officials on the subject. As a result, Trump’s very displeased and frustrated.
Of course, Trump is simply tweeting his random thoughts as he usually does, but the CBO has stated that a repeal without a replace would work disastrous effects beyond the obvious. It would not only strip insurance from 18 million Americans in the first year (and 32 million with a decade), but it would send nongroup premiums into the stratosphere (immediately by up to 25% and 200% by 2026), due to the loss of marketplace subsidies and a cessation of the Medicaid expansion. Not only that, but the Economic Policy Institute estimates that an Obamacare repeal (without a replacement) would drain 1.2 million jobs from the economy.
And there would go all of Trump’s “jobs” claims — that is, if Congress takes Trump’s advice from his tweets, which the White House considers to be official statements by POTUS.