ELECTION/GOP/HEALTHCARE/PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump signaled Monday [4-1-19] that congressional Republicans would wait until after the 2020 elections to vote on a GOP replacement for Obamacare — putting off a presumably savage legislative battle on a hot-button campaign issue until after his re-election bid…Trump claimed that the as-yet-unseen Republican proposal ‘will be truly great HealthCare that will work for America,’ writing online that ‘Republicans will always support Pre-Existing Conditions.’ The unexpected string of tweets added drama to a week that has seen Obamacare return to the fore as a policy issue. The president’s pledge comes days after his Justice Department endorsed a federal court ruling to eliminate the Affordable Care Act in its entirety, moving to invalidate the landmark health care law despite objections within Trump’s orbit from Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Attorney General William Barr. The ruling by District Judge Reed O’Connor had suggested that the Obamacare statute, which has passed muster with the Supreme Court, was actually wholly unconstitutional.”
–Quint Forget and John Bresnahan, “Trump punts health care until after 2020,” Politico, April 1, 2019 12:36 am