Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff Marc Short said Wednesday that the White House would release a new health care plan “this year.”
But Short, who previously served as the Trump White House’s director of legislative affairs and then briefly left the administration, implied it could be a while until the public sees Trump’s latest attempt to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act.
“The President will be putting forward plans this year that we hope to introduce into Congress,” Short told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “The reality is that the court decision is likely not until the summer of 2020, by the time it would reach the Supreme Court.”
The “court decision” is a reference to the lawsuit from several Republican state attorneys general seeking to scrub Obamacare from the books entirely. On Monday, the Trump administration signaled its approval of the effort by abandoning any defense of the law in court.
Earlier Wednesday, Trump said that “if” the Supreme Court ultimately strikes down Obamacare, “we will have a plan that’s far better than Obamacare.”
The President’s comment seemed to ignore Republicans’ repeated unsuccessful attempts, in the last Congress, to repeal Obamacare and replace it with their own health care priorities.
VP Pence's chief of staff Marc Short: "The President will be putting forward plans this year that we hope to introduce into Congress." pic.twitter.com/D43c5rG7da
— Matt Shuham (@mattshuham) March 27, 2019
