Trump claims Obamacare was 'meant to explode' in 2017

President Donald Trump suggested Friday that his predecessor’s signature legislative achievement is a ticking time bomb that was set to detonate once former President Barack Obama left office.

Trump defended the rapid pace at which Republicans are trying to usher through legislation to repeal and replace Obama’s Affordable Care Act. The House plan, unveiled late Monday as the American Health Care Act, has already gone through committee markups and advanced through key panels as Republicans rush to meet an April deadline to sign the first phase of Trump’s three-pronged plan to repeal and replace Obamacare.


“We must act now to save Americans from the imploding Obamacare disaster,” Trump said Friday during a meeting on health care with Vice President Mike Pence and House committee chairmen.

“Premiums have skyrocketed by double digits and triple digits in some cases,” Trump continued, citing Arizona’s increase an example. “And it’s going up a lot higher. ‘17 would be a disaster for Obamacare. That’s the year it was meant to explode because Obama won’t be here. That was when it was supposed to be even worse.”

Trump applauded the committee chairmen for their “diligent work” to advance the legislation, which many Republicans campaigned on.

“That’s what people want,” Trump asserted. “They want repeal and replace.”

Despite the president’s bullishness on his effort to make good on his campaign pledge to repeal and replace Obamacare, he faces dissent from members of his own party. The elimination of Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion and a proposal to replace insurance subsidies with tax credits have divided centrist and far-right Republicans from agreeing on a plan that could advance through both the House and Senate.

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Trump, however, disregarded the intraparty divisions and the pace at which legislation moves through Congress. “This is the time we’re gonna get it done,” he said. “We’re working together. We have some great results, we have tremendous spirit and I think it’s something that’s just going to happen very shortly.”

For his part, Trump pitched the House plan Friday as a proposal that ends Obamacare tax hikes — saving hundreds of billions of dollars, he said — and the law’s unpopular individual mandate, which he said “forces Americans to buy government-approved plans.”

As far as Obamacare, he warned, “As bad as it is now, it’ll get even worse.”