Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) tells Republicans to give up on Obamacare repeal, and Democrats will work with them to improve the law. (Screen grab from C-SPAN)

(CNSNews.com) – “I would say to the speaker, to Leader McConnell, and to the president -- drop repeal, drop it today, and drop it for good,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told a news conference on Tuesday.

“Stop undermining the Affordable Care Act. Now, once those things are done, we Democrats are more than happy to sit down together and come up with ways to make the law work better,” Schumer continued.

We're willing to make changes. Absolutely, to make it better. And the first step we're asking that the president make to show he's serious about working to improve the law is to rescind his executive order that is an attempt to sabotage our healthcare system by telling people to undermine the Affordable Care Act.



This week, large numbers of Senate Democrats will be writing to the president urging him to do just that.

In one of his first acts as president, Trump signed an executive order giving federal agencies the authority to “waive, defer, grant exemptions from, or delay the implementation of any provision or requirement” of the Affordabe Care Act that would “impose a fiscal burden on any State or a cost, fee, tax, penalty, or regulatory burden on individuals, families, healthcare providers, health insurers, patients…”

“The American people want leadership from the president,” Schumer said. “They don't want finger-pointing. They don't want blame-games. They want him to lead. They know the president's in charge. And if their deductibles go up, if their premiums go up, if their -- the health care they're offered goes down, they're going to say, ‘Mr. President, fix it.’”



Schumer said Democrats are ready and willing to work with the president to “expand coverage and lower the cost of health care.” But he said that will happen only if Republicans “drop this hopeless repeal effort once and for all, and show they're serious about improving the law instead of sabotaging it.”

Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), appearing with Schumer, urged President Trump to do “three very important things.”

“Senator Schumer's already mentioned one of those, and that is to rescind the executive -- the ACA executive order,” he said.

“Number two, implement the law that we have while we work toward bipartisan improvements.” (In other words, Obamacare, with its government mandates and dictates, is here to stay.)



“Number three, do no harm in Medicaid and the more than 70 million Americans who depend on health care coverage.”

Under Obamacare, more than half of the states agreed to expand their taxpayer-funded Medicaid rolls to cover many more low-income people, not just the poorest, the sickest and the disabled. Republicans want to trim the Medicaid rolls of able-bodied adults and shift them to other plans. Republicans have proposed sending block grants to the states, which would then decide Medicaid eligibility.

At a news conference of their own on Tuesday, House Republican leaders said they are not done with repeal and replace. "If Obamacare just stays as is, that’s not acceptable to the American people. That’s not what we said we would do. So we’re going to go figure out how we get this done," House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said.

But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had a different view of things at his Tuesday news conference: "I think where we are on Obamacare, regretfully, at the moment is where the Democrats wanted us to be, which is with the status quo,” McConnell said. "[W]e have the existing law in place, and I think we're just going to have to see how that works out.”