HEALTHCARE/OBAMACARE(ACA)/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Unwilling to accept defeat, President Trump insisted on Wednesday that Republicans ‘have the votes’ to dismantle much of the Affordable Care Act, and he predicted that the Senate would vote on legislation to do that in the first three months of next year…
In the space of 10 minutes, the president said seven times that ‘we have the votes’ on health care. But that appeared to be based on some erroneous or optimistic assumptions: That Senator Thad Cochran, Republican of Mississippi, was in the hospital and unavailable to vote, and that other Republican senators, including Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, were ready to vote yes.
Mr. Cochran quickly corrected the president…
Even if Mr. Cochran had been in Washington this week, Senate Republicans would not have had the votes to pass the Graham-Cassidy bill. Three of the 52 Republican senators — Susan Collins of Maine, John McCain of Arizona and Rand Paul of Kentucky — had announced that they opposed the measure, which had no support from Democrats…
Mr. Trump said that he was confident that the Senate would approve the guts of the Graham-Cassidy bill, which would give each state a lump sum of federal funds, in place of the money states receive under the Affordable Care Act for insurance subsidies and the expansion of Medicaid…
It was also not clear what bipartisan health care bill Mr. Trump had in mind.”
-Robert Pear and Thomas Kaplan, “Not Giving Up, Trump Insists He Has Votes to Repeal Obamacare,” The New York Times online, Sept. 27, 2017