Trump: Rand Paul will ‘come along’ on GOP healthcare plan

by Rebecca Savransky - 03/07/17 7:28 PM ET

President Trump on Tuesday evening expressed confidence that Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) would “come along” with the House GOP plan to repeal and replace ObamaCare.

“I feel sure that my friend @RandPaul will come along with the new and great health care program because he knows Obamacare is a disaster!” Trump tweeted.

I feel sure that my friend @RandPaul will come along with the new and great health care program because he knows Obamacare is a disaster!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 8, 2017

{mosads}Around the same time, Paul appeared on CNN, calling the House plan “a little bit more ObamaCare-like than I would like.”

“We’re very, very united on repeal, not so much on replace, and so I think the real problem is adding replacement to the repeal bill,” he said. “I think the repeal bill probably won’t pass unless we take replacement off of it.”

Paul, who has been an outspoken critic of the healthcare proposal rollout, tweeted Tuesday morning that the House GOP plan wouldn’t pass because it is too similar to the existing healthcare law.

“The House leadership plan is Obamacare Lite. It will not pass. Conservatives are not going to take it,” Paul tweeted.

Paul and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said Tuesday they plan to introduce their own ObamaCare repeal plan. They said they will introduce a clean bill to repeal ObamaCare, as Congress did in 2015.

Conservatives lawmakers argue that they should vote on repeal as a separate measure from replacement, and then should debate how to replace former President Obama’s signature healthcare legislation.

The lawmakers are opposed to several parts of the House GOP leadership’s proposal, called the American Health Care Act, including a refundable tax credit to help people buy insurance that they dub a “new entitlement.”

The Trump administration on Tuesday formally backed the House GOP’s plan, with Trump himself meeting with House lawmakers at the White House and urging support for the proposal.

Tags Rand Paul