President Donald Trump said Tuesday congressional Republicans would take another shot at repealing and replacing the nation's health care law after they passed tax cuts, presumably extending the Obamacare debate into 2018.
Once again declaring Obamacare "virtually dead," the president indicated during a Rose Garden press conference with the prime minister of Greece he hadn't given up on his months-long struggle to quash the Affordable Care Act, saying he believed Republicans now had the votes to approve a plan to provide block grants to states to provide health care. While there's no evidence Senate Republicans have suddenly acquired the votes to repeal Obamacare, a bipartisan tandem at the helm of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee announced it had reached a short-term agreement to help stabilize health care markets.
Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, a Republican, said the agreement with Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington, would resume payments to health insurers that Trump had blocked through an executive order. Alexander told reporters on Capitol Hill the deal included "cost sharing payments as well as meaningful flexibility."
Murray said the short-term fix was needed in order to rid the health insurance system of "uncertainty and dysfunction" caused by the president's zeal to nullify the law. Without the subsidies, insurers warned of dramatic premium spikes.
Trump appeared to back the pact, which would require a full vote from the Senate.
"We have been involved and this is a short-term deal because we ultimately think block grants going to the states is going to be the answer," Trump said. "The solution will be for about a year or two years and it'll get us over this intermediate hump."
He added, "It is a short-term solution so that we don't have this very dangerous little period including dangerous period for insurance companies by the way."
Republicans have set a goal of passing significant tax rate reductions by the end of the year, but Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell signaled Monday that ultimate passage could creep into the following year.