Trump Is Ready To Leave Obamacare In Place

It all comes down to this. After weeks of attempting to negotiate with his own party, President Trump just announced in shocking fashion that he’s willing to let Obamacare stay in place.

That, of course, is all dependent on how Republicans vote on Friday.

In a stunning announcement, Trump’s White House budget director Mick Mulvaney announced that if a scheduled vote fails in the House Friday morning “Trump is prepared to move on and leave Obamacare in place,” according to a report by Politico.

That report was backed up by a breaking news report from CNN, which said that House Speaker Paul Ryan has told fellow Republicans that Trump is done negotiating and they may be “stuck with Obamacare.”

If Republicans lose more than 21 of their own votes, and all Democrats vote against the bill, it will fail.

A number of ultra-conservative House Republicans from the Freedom Caucus are opposed to the bill, saying it doesn’t go far enough, while more moderate Republicans are opposed to the draconian nature of the proposed changes to the American Health Care Act.

And the opposition only seems to be growing from both factions—along with unified opposition from Democrats.

The bad news for Trump and his fellow Republicans only got worse on Thursday when the Congressional Budget Office released a revised assessment of the updated GOP health care plan, which showed it saves less money while simultaneously taking away insurance from even more Americans than the nearly universally panned original version of the bill.

Of course, all of that could quickly change if House Republicans put aside their differences and vote for the bill in its current form. Yet, even in that scenario, the bill goes to the Senate, where it’s expected to undergo extensive changes from more moderate Republicans who are facing increasing pressure from voters in their home states to leave Obamacare in place.