GOP rep: ObamaCare can’t be ‘repaired’

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) is pushing back on Republicans shifting on ObamaCare from “repeal and replace” to “repair,” saying the massive healthcare law cannot be saved.

” ‘Repair’ by definition implies there’s something worth fixing,” Jordan said Friday on Fox News’s “America’s Newsroom.” “I would argue that ObamaCare is so bad you’ve got to get rid of every single bit of it. Every tax, every regulation, every mandate.

“This thing was a complete disaster, and to say you’re going to ‘repair’ something implies that you can actually fix something, that there’s something worth fixing. This needs to be repealed because that’s what we told the voters we were going to do.”

{mosads}Some Republican leaders are adjusting their rhetoric on ObamaCare, suggesting they may overhaul the law rather than scrap it outright.

The Affordable Care Act contains several popular features, leaving GOP lawmakers at odds over how best to reform the sweeping healthcare legislation.

“I’m trying to be accurate on this, that there are some of these provisions in the law that will probably stay, or we may modify them, but we’re going to fix things, we’re going to repair things,” Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), a key player on healthcare, told reporters Tuesday.

“There are things we can build on and repair; there are things we can completely repeal,” the House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman added.

Jordan, however, says ObamaCare deserves extinction even if there is no ready replacement.

“The most important thing to do is repeal it first,” Jordan said. “Because when you repeal it, I think healthcare gets better and costs less.”

“The replacement is market principles, choice, actually expand[ing] the use of health savings accounts, actually allow[ing] the interstate shopping of insurance,” added Jordan, the former chairman of the House Freedom Caucus.

“That is the replace, in my judgment. [It] should focus on consumers and families and doctors, not on Washington, [D.C.] like ObamaCare does.”

President Trump has made repealing and replacing ObamaCare a focus of his young administration, though lawmakers have been slow to coalesce around a single plan.