Throughout the most recent election cycle, a common guarantee given by the president was the assurance of repealing and replacing The Affodable Care Act. That guarantee flopped as the latest GOP healthcare bill failed to pass the approval of the Senate.
Before he was elected, during his campaigning in Pennsylvania, President Donald Trump said that the Affordable Care Act was a catastrophe and that he would “ask Congress to convene a special session so we can repeal and replace,” the current health care act, according to Fox News.
Trump was a huge proponent in the most recent healthcare proposal. According to The Washington Examiner, it was only after a meeting with President Trump that the Graham-Cassidy healthcare bill authors, Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Bill Cassidy, R.-La., decided to continue the debate on healthcare as Congress was turning its attention to tax reform.
The continued push is further evidence of Republican Congress members making a last attempt at fulfilling their campaign promises as re-election for 8 Republican seats looms around the corner.
These nationwide tensions manifest themselves at JBU, as well.
Phillip Todd, co-founder of the JBU College Republicans, said that Congress members’ success in re-election will be defined by campaign promises.
“Even though they are doing a lot of other great things. For instance, Trump has repealed 16 business regulations to every one proposed, which I cherish a lot as a free-market economics junkie.”
Todd emphasized, however, that this was not enough, especially considering the Republican party as a whole is made up of common-working class men and women whose only “metrics for success [is] campaign promises, and if they don’t get [Obamacare] repealed, it is going to look really bad for them at the time of re-election.”
In the months preceding the Graham-Cassidy Healthcare Bill, the Republican party pushed many different styles and iterations of a Republican healthcare bill in the attempt to “pander to the largest group of Republicans, and they aren’t really sticking true to what they ideologically want to pass, I think they are trying to stick more to ‘what can we pass to appease the voters?’”
However, the Republican party has “too many constituencies and factions to get anything moving forward,” said Professor of Political Science Daniel Bennet, Ph.D., which is one reason why the Graham-Cassidy healthcare bill failed so dramatically.
Freshman Communications Major Tyler Kihm calls attention to the bi-partisan roots of The Affodable Care Act, which is one reasons why it was so effective, proposing Republicans consider bringing Democrats into the conversation. Kihm said, “people have forgotten that everyone had a share in the original Affodable Care Act bill. Now, all of a sudden, the GOP is introducing these bills, and they don’t want any bipartisan effort at all.”
According to The Post and Courier, Sen. Graham also believes that a bipartisan approach seems like the only way to successfully repeal The Affordable Care Act. He released a statement last Tuesday saying the fight would continue, and he hopes to “find a bipartisan pathway forward that basically changes Obamacare, doesn’t prop it up.”