The White House is insisting that the Senate resume efforts to repeal and replace the nation's health care law, signaling that President Donald Trump stands ready to end required payments to insurers this week to let "Obamacare implode" and force congressional action.
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Trump vented his frustration on Twitter Monday. He said: "If ObamaCare is hurting people, & it is, why shouldn't it hurt the insurance companies & why should Congress not be paying what public pays?"
In fact, most members of Congress get their coverage through the Affordable Care Act like millions of other Americans. The 2010 law was specifically written to include lawmakers, and starting in 2014, members and their staffs had to use federal or state healthcare exchanges.
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Most members who use the coverage buy it off the health care exchange created by the District of Columbia.
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For seven years, Republicans have promised that once they took power, they would scrap Obama's overhaul and pass a replacement. But that effort crashed most recently in the Senate on Friday.
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Republicans hold a 52-48 majority in the Senate, where no Democrats voted for the GOP bill and three Republicans defected in the final vote Friday. One of the GOP defectors, Sen. John McCain, has since returned to Arizona for treatment for brain cancer.
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"Don't give up Republican senators, the World is watching: Repeal & Replace," Trump said in a tweet.
On Wednesday TODAY'S TMJ4's Charles Benson talked with Sen. Ron Johnson and Sen. Tammy Baldwin before last week's failed vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
Johnson called Washington a "dysfunctional alternate place" where lawmakers are not focusing on the problem.
"Around here people immediately leap to their policy prescription, their solution, their legislation and they start arguing, most often without facts, without figures," Johnson said.
Johnson says insurance premiums have doubled for individuals in the open market "because of the incredibly faulty architecture of Obamacare."
Baldwin says the Affordable Care Act offers essential benefits that did not exist before Democrats passed the landmark legislation.
"Prior to the Affordable Care Act, there was not a single individual insurance offering pregnancy and maternity care, can you imagine that? If you are a young woman who needs to have insurance and that's all written out, that does not happen anymore," Baldwin said.
Baldwin agrees premiums are too high and Democrats are willing to work with Republicans to address that problem but she takes issue with Trump calling them "obstructionist."
"This is partisan nonsense, except the problem with using the word nonsense is it's too light hearted for the seriousness of this issue," Baldwin said.
