President Donald Trump waded into a raging health care debate Thursday afternoon, assuring his supporters on Twitter that the tumultuous effort to repeal and replace Obamacare was “coming along great.”
Despite what you hear in the press, healthcare is coming along great. We are talking to many groups and it will end in a beautiful picture!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 9, 2017
The tweet comes as Republicans are split on the American Health Care Act, part of which cleared through the House Ways and Means Committee early Thursday morning, and the rest of which is still being marked up in the Energy and Commerce Committee. The legislative action has come before the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office issues a report on the bill’s cost.
Many conservatives, like Rep. Jim Jordan and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-IA) have said that the bill moving swiftly through the legislative process isn’t what they bargained for. Some moderate Republican senators are hesitant to support a bill that freezes Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion. Groups like the AARP and the AMA, along with large hospital trade associations, have come out against the ACHA. The chief medical officer at the Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services, an Obama appointee, came out against it on Twitter Wednesday night.
Chuck Schumer on Thursday morning called the bill “Trumpcare” and said simply: “Look, no one likes this bill.”