Rodney Lamkey Jr. for POLITICO Manchin: Trump voters will know Republicans took their health coverage away Manchin declined to declare the House bill dead on arrival in the Senate, but he said there is no way it would receive 60 votes.

Sen. Joe Manchin, the centrist West Virginia Democrat, warned Thursday that the Republican health care bill will harm some of President Donald Trump’s supporters — and while they may not believe Democrats' 2010 health law gave them insurance, “they’re going to know who took it away from them.”

Manchin, speaking to POLITICO’s Anna Palmer and Jake Sherman at a Playbook event, reiterated his opposition to repealing the Affordable Care Act, Barack Obama’s signature health care reform law, which House Republicans hope to gut in a vote later on Thursday.


Saying Obamacare had helped treat people addicted to opioids and extended insurance coverage to 20 million people, Manchin said he has warned Trump that the law’s beneficiaries will blame him if they lose their insurance.

“I said, ‘Mr. President, 172,000 West Virginians got insurance for the first time,’” Manchin said. "They’ve got something they never had before. They don’t know how they got it, they don’t know who gave it to them, they don’t know the Democrats, nothing about, ‘It’s Obamacare.’ They don’t know any of that. All they know is they’ve got it.”

“And you know what? They voted for you, Mr. President,” he said. “They’re going to know who took it away from them.”

Manchin declined to declare the House bill, which leaders say has enough support to pass the chamber, dead on arrival in the Senate, but he said there is no way it would receive 60 votes. Senate Republicans, however, plan to ram legislation through on a simple majority using a budget procedure that can circumvent Democratic filibusters.

Still, Manchin argued that the Senate should take up bipartisan fixes to Obamacare instead of repealing it.

“There’s some things that can be done,” Manchin said, proposing that he could get eight or 10 Democrats to work with Republicans to make changes to Obamacare, as long as it’s not repealed.