Trump praises new health care bill as GOP tries to sell it

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump and his administration's top health official praised the new House Republican health care legislation today as the GOP embarked on a drive to sell the proposal to rank-and-file lawmakers and the public.

Trump's morning tweet lauding "our wonderful new Healthcare Bill" kicked off the day. Shortly afterward, Health Secretary Tom Price wrote to the chairmen of the two House committees that wrote the measures, saying "they align with the president's goal of rescuing Americans from the failures of the Affordable Care Act."

The new bill aims to replace that law – one of former President Barack Obama's signature achievements – with a system designed along conservative lines. Primarily affected would be some 20 million people who purchase their own private health plans directly from an insurer and the more than 70 million covered by Medicaid, the federal-state program for low-income people.

Significantly, Price specifically commended GOP plans to provide millions of Americans with a refundable tax credit – meaning even people without tax liability would receive the assistance. Congressional conservatives have opposed a refundable credit, saying it would create a new entitlement program the government cannot afford.

White House budget chief Mick Mulvaney said it's unfair to compare how many people would have health insurance under the new Republican plan to those under the current health law that Republicans have long derided as "Obamacare."

"What Obamacare did was make insurance affordable, but care impossible to actually afford," Mulvaney said on NBC's "Today Show." ''The deductibles were simply too high. So people could say they have coverage but they couldn't actually get the medical care they needed when they get sick."

Obamacare plans did typically come with high deductibles, but the law also provided cost-sharing subsidies to people with modest incomes. Those subsidies will be eliminated under the Republican plan, and it's unclear how high the deductibles would be under the new approach.