Trump: Conservatives now support House health care bill

After meeting with the Republican Study Committee, President Donald Trump on Friday asserted that conservatives who had opposed the House’s health care plan now support the bill, and he claimed credit for their stances.

Trump, who said the group made “certain changes” but “frankly very little” to the proposal, also said he wanted “everyone to know I’m 100 percent behind” the plan.


“I also want everyone to know that all of these no’s or potential no’s are all yeses,” Trump said. “Every single person sitting in this room is now a yes.”

House Republicans are set to vote Thursday on the Obamacare replacement bill, sources tell POLITICO.

Later Friday morning, at a different meeting on veterans’ affairs, Trump reiterated that the House members had changed their minds about the bill and claimed that it took just 15 minutes into the discussion for them to do so. (He did acknowledge that they had been debating the bill for four or five days beforehand.)

Trump's claim of success drew quick pushback, though, from at least one House conservative, the libertarian-leaning Michigan Rep. Justin Amash.

"Absolutely not true that conservatives have flipped to yes on the health care bill," Amash tweeted. "It doesn't repeal Obamacare. It remains a disaster."

The proposal has been criticized by conservatives in the House as too similar to the Affordable Care Act, former President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul known as Obamacare, with too few cuts to the federal government’s involvement in the health care system.

Moderates in the Senate, meanwhile, have questioned whether it cuts too much, so any move to make the House version more conservative risks hurting its chances of passing the other chamber.

But Trump did not mention that dynamic on Friday, instead making bold promises about the success of the plan. This version will be “fantastic,” he said, insurance “plans are going to come out like nobody’s ever seen before,” and “we’re going to take care of people at all levels.”

But he also suggested, without elaborating, that it might “take a little while” to work.

“We're going to have a health care plan that's going to be second to none,” Trump said. “It's going to be great. And the people will see that. By the way, it will take a little while because before it all kicks in and welds together, it takes a little while.”

As he often does, Trump also criticized the press, arguing that news organizations have not been “speaking properly” in its coverage of the proposal. He also that Obamacare is “dead.”