What Congress, President Trump and Former President Obama are saying about healthcare

“Politically, the collapse of the repeal effort is potentially devastating for Republicans. It leaves Trump without a significant policy achievement in the critical first six months of his presidency; it casts a pall over the party’s coming drives to pass a budget and overhaul the tax code; and it exposes GOP lawmakers to rising anger from their conservative base.
Substantively, it leaves much work undone. While the ACA has made health insurance accessible to millions of Americans, it has failed to contain rising costs, especially in the individual insurance market, where people without access to employer-provided coverage buy policies. Without federal action — and additional cash — those marketplaces could become unstable.”
“ “The vote last night presents the Senate with an opportunity to start fresh,” McCain said in a statement. Democrats, too, expressed interest in working across the aisle, especially on a plan to make federal cost-sharing subsidies permanent. The subsidies — which will total about $7 billion this year and $10 billion in 2018 — reimburse insurers for reducing co-payments and deductibles for certain low-income customers, reducing their out-of-pocket costs….” (A)

“House Republicans are fed up and openly blaming their Senate colleagues across the Capitol for torpedoing their party’s pledge to repeal and replace Obamacare.
They headed home for a five-week summer recess having failed on a key policy goal they vowed to get done once they controlled Congress and the White House. And things aren’t getting any easier as major fiscal fights are hanging over them this fall.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, who spent weeks urging his members to hold their fire and give Senate Republicans some space to get a health care deal, didn’t hide his frustration at a closed-door meeting in the Capitol basement on Friday. He effectively threw the Senate under the bus, telling his colleagues that the House of Representatives was the only arm of the government that was working.” Their overall message to voters: don’t blame us, it’s all the Senate’s fault.”(B)

““Trump, meanwhile, continued to express mainly hostility toward the ACA. On Friday, he unleashed a series of tweets blaming “3 Republicans and 48 Democrats” in the Senate who “let the American people down” by rejecting the latest overhaul proposal.
“As I said from the beginning, let ObamaCare implode, then deal. Watch!” Trump wrote. He also called for Senate Republicans to abolish the filibuster — a venerable Senate procedure designed to protect the minority party that requires contentious matters to receive the votes of at least 60 senators.”” (C)

“President Obama has always said we should build on this law, just as members of both parties worked together to improve Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid over the years,” the statement continues. President Obama still believes that it is possible for Congress to demonstrate the necessary bipartisanship and political courage to keep delivering on the promise of quality, affordable health insurance for every American.” (D)

(A) Republican divided on whom to blame for health-care defeat, and what to do next, by Juliet Eilperin, Paul Kane and David Weigel, https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/senate-rejects-measure-to-partly-repeal-affordable-care-act-dealing-trump-and-gop-leaders-a-major-setback/2017/07/28/f2865b10-7364-11e7-8f39-eeb7d3a2d304_story.html?utm_term=.b7a201c0398
(B) House Republicans rail on Senate GOP for torpedoing health care, by Deirdre Walsh, Phil Mattingly, MJ Lee, Kristin Wilson and Lauren Fox, http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/28/politics/house-republicans-blame-senate-health-care/index.html
(C) Trump lashes out over healthcare reform failure, by: Barney Jopson and Sam Fleming, https://www.ft.com/content/60659e20-73b0-11e7-aca6-c6bd07df1a3c(
(D) Obama speaks out after GOP health care bill failure, https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/07/28/obama-speaks-out-after-gop-health-care-bill-failure/23054794/