Trump wants Dems’ help to forge health-care plan

In March, we urged President Donald J. Trump to reach out to Democrats in Congress to fulfill a pledge he made last year to provide “health insurance for everybody.”

Unfortunately, Trump chose to join Republicans on Capitol Hill in their purely political endeavor to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as “Obamacare.”

It didn’t matter to the Republican president that the majority of the American people are not in favor of totally dismantling the law, the brainchild of former Democratic President Barack Obama. It was enacted only with Democratic votes in Congress.

Republicans used “Obamacare” to effectively change the balance of power in Congress and to win the presidency last year.

Thus, over the past eight months there have been several legislative initiatives to repeal and replace the ACA. Each one has ultimately crashed and burned.

Why? For the simple reason that thoughtful and fair-minded GOP members of Congress have recognized the sheer folly of doing away with a program that provides millions of Americans with affordable, accessible health care.

They, along with Democrats in Congress, acknowledge there are some major problems with “Obamacare” that need to be addressed. However, throwing the baby out with the bath water is not the answer.

So, late last month, after Trump and the GOP suffered another defeat, the president had this to say:

“I will negotiate with Democrats to see if we can make a bipartisan bill.”

If only he had done so months ago, there wouldn’t have been the political bloodletting that was so much a part of the repeal-and-replace effort.

Trump said he wants Congress to vote on a health-care reform package by early next year.

As we have consistently argued, doing away with “Obamacare” and replacing it with a plan that leaves millions of Americans without the safety net of health-insurance coverage is inhumane and economically problematic.

People who have no insurance and cannot afford to pay for health care out of their own pockets end up in the emergency rooms of hospitals or ignore their illnesses until it’s too late.

No one living in the richest country in the world should have to worry about getting sick.

‘INSURANCE FOR EVERYONE’

That’s why we’ve latched on to comments by President-elect Trump just days before he took the oath of office Jan. 20.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, we will repeat what has been written in this space several times.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Trump said he was on the verge of completing a plan to replace the Affordable Care Act.

He told the newspaper his plan would ensure “[health] insurance for everybody.” He also said he intended to force drug companies to negotiate directly with the government on prices in Medicare and Medicaid.

Here’s how the Post reported on Trump’s health-care initiative:

“As he has developed a replacement package, Trump said he has paid attention to critics who say that repealing ‘Obamacare’ would put coverage at risk for more than 20 million Americans covered under the law’s insurance exchanges and Medicaid expansion.”

In discussing his goal of health insurance for all, the then president-elect told the newspaper, “We’re going to have insurance for everybody. There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us.”

He added that people covered under the law “can expect to have great health care. It will be in a much simplified form. Much less expensive and much better.”

As for his pursuit of the pharmaceutical industry, Trump told the Washington Post, “They’re politically protected, but not anymore.”

The president ignored our advice in March when we urged him to work with Democrats on developing a plan that would provide health insurance for all Americans.

Now, however, with Democratic votes needed in the Senate to pass any health-care measure, we are cautiously optimistic that he will bring together members of Congress from both parties and also governors, led by Republican John R. Kasich of Ohio and Democrat John Hickenlooper of Colorado.

Kasich and Hickenlooper have been working on ways to improve the national health-care law. The president should reach out them.