Trump predicts ObamaCare will be ‘terminated’ by the courts

President Trump said in an interview published Friday that he thinks ObamaCare will be “terminated,” predicting that a lawsuit challenging the 2010 health care law will succeed.

“I believe it’s going to be terminated, whether it be through the Texas case, which is going through the court system as a victory right now, because of, you know, the various elements of that case. You would think it would have to be terminated,” Trump said in an interview with The New York Times.

{mosads}Trump was referencing a lawsuit seeking to overturn ObamaCare that was brought by Texas and other GOP-led states. A federal district court judge in Texas ruled against ObamaCare in December.

But the decision by the judge, appointed by former President George W. Bush, is being appealed and legal experts in both parties are very skeptical that lawsuit will ultimately succeed.

Trump said, as he has in the past, that he thinks Democrats and Republicans could come together on a replacement if the law is invalidated. But getting both sides to agree on legislation overhauling the U.S. health care system would likely prove a daunting challenge for lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

“A deal will be made for good health care in this country,” Trump said. “That’s one of the things I’ll be doing.”

Democrats have been hammering Republicans for supporting the lawsuit, and they seized on Trump’s recent comments.

“In an interview with @nytimes, Trump openly admits Republicans’ ongoing intent to repeal the ACA through the Texas v. U.S. court case,” Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee wrote on Twitter. “THIS is why Congressional hearings on its impacts are important.”

The committee had already scheduled a Wednesday hearing on the effects of the lawsuit, one of the first health care hearings of the new Democratic House majority.

The Texas lawsuit argues that because Congress in 2017 repealed the penalty in ObamaCare’s mandate for everyone to have coverage, the mandate can no longer be constitutionally justified as a tax. Therefore, the challengers argue the mandate is unconstitutional and the entirety of the health care law should be struck down.

Many legal experts say it makes no sense for the rest of the law to be struck, given that Congress’s intent in 2017 was only to repeal the mandate penalty and leave the rest of the law intact.

Trump also told The New York Times that “we’ve done a lot on health care, and people haven’t given us too much credit.”

The Trump administration has opened up alternative types of health insurance, like short-term plans, which are cheaper but do not offer the same protections, such as covering pre-existing conditions.