PHILADELPHIA—On Jan. 11, then-President-elect Trump said in a press conference that “we” would be introducing a plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act shortly after Rep. Tom Price’s confirmation as health and human services secretary. On Jan. 15, he telephoned the Washington Post to announce that “he is nearing completion of a plan to replace President Obama’s signature health-care law with the goal of ‘insurance for everybody.’” It is now Jan. 25, and no one is entirely sure that a Trump White House health care plan exists.
Republicans in Congress certainly seem to think that they’re in charge of the process. In addition to the various committees charged with writing the repeal reconciliation instructions, there’s also a fresh new “Obamacare Action Team” assembled to “guide the party’s public messaging during the Obamacare repeal-and-replace process.” It is led by Rep. Doug Collins, a Georgia congressman and vice chairman of the House Republican Conference.
Collins spoke with reporters Wednesday afternoon at the joint House-Senate GOP retreat in Philadelphia. (Well, not actually at the retreat. He spoke with reporters at the downtown Marriott, where reporters are being held. The actual retreat is being held at the Loews on the other side of Market Street.) I asked him whether he was expecting the White House to release a separate repeal-and-replace proposal after Price’s confirmation.
“I think there’ll be things that the new secretary … will be working on that will be hand-in-glove with what we’re doing,” Collins said.
But not a separate piece of legislation from the administration?
“They’re going to have input into this from minute one.”
This sounds a lot like Congress is developing the proposal with input from the White House, which is precisely what everyone assumed to be the case until Donald Trump said that he would be releasing his own proposal. And the proposal that Congress is developing is still very much in “development,” far from the stage of “finishing touches.”
