3/24/2017

HEALTHCARE/OBAMACARE(ACA)/POLITICS/PAUL RYAN/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, facing a revolt among conservative and moderate Republicans, rushed to the White House Friday [3-24-17] afternoon to inform President Trump he did not have the votes to pass legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act and to decide whether to pull the bill from consideration.
The president and the speaker faced the humiliating prospect of a major defeat on legislation promised for seven years, since the landmark health legislation was signed into law. President Trump had demanded a vote regardless, which has been scheduled for Friday afternoon. But House leaders were leaning against such a public loss.
The House opened debate Friday on what would have been one of the most consequential pieces of legislation in years, a bill that would have rolled back a major, established social welfare program, a feat that is almost unheard of.
The Republican legislation, called the American Health Care Act, would end the Affordable Care Act’s mandate that almost everyone have health care, replacing it with a system of age-based tax credits to purchase health insurance — a shift that would save the government hundreds of billions of dollars and would cut taxes, but could leave 24 million more Americans without coverage in a decade, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said.”

-Robert Pear, Julie Hirschfeld Davis, and Jennifer Steinhauer, “Paul Ryan Rushes to White House to Tell Trump Votes Are Lacking to Repeal Obamacare,” The New York Tmes online, March 24, 2017