Capitol Hill Showdown: The Battle Over Obamacare Heats Up
The battle over Obamacare is heating up after Vice President-elect Mike Pence met with Congressional Republicans on Wednesday to lay the groundwork for repealing the Affordable Care Act once President-Elect Donald Trump takes office. But President Obama went to Capitol Hill as well to meet with Congressional Democrats about how to protect his signature health-care law. After the meeting with President Obama, Sen. Chuck Schumer, (D-NY), warned that Republican efforts to repeal Obamacare would ‘Make America Sick Again.”
Former Health and Human Services Deputy Secretary Tevi Troy told FOX Business Network’s Neil Cavuto he was “disturbed and unimpressed” by Schumer’s play on Trump’s campaign slogan.
“[It was] obviously taking off on Trump’s insightful ‘Make America Great Again,’ which spoke to the aspirations of the American people to reclaim a greatness that this country has and has had for two centuries,” told said.
Troy also took issue with claims that Obamacare is completely responsible for health care costs rising at a slower rate than they would have otherwise.
“A lot of the moderation in the health care costs appears to be coming from employer-sponsored care, which is one of the key building blocks of our system, covers 170 million people, and that has to do with a lot of the steps employers took in recent years in order to control their costs and a lot of that predates the Affordable Care Act,” he said.
He was hopeful that under the Trump administration, reforming health care along with tax cuts and cuts in regulations could help improve America’s health-care system as well as the overall economic outlook.
“Make changes in health care, have a new wave of health reform that actually improves health care, incentivizes people to purchase health care by making it cheaper so that people want to buy the product, then we could have a real resurgence in this country and I’m always optimistic about America,” Troy said.