President Trump said Sunday that it could take “sometime into next year” until his ObamaCare replacement plan is ready, a slower timetable than he and other Republicans have put forward in the past.
Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly asked Trump in an interview before the Super Bowl if Americans can “expect a new healthcare plan rolled out by the Trump Administration this year.”
“Yes, in the process and maybe it’ll take till sometime into next year but we’re certainly going to be in the process,” Trump replied.
“You have to remember Obamacare doesn’t work so we are putting in a wonderful plan,” he added.
“It statutorily takes a while to get. We’re going to be putting it in fairly soon, I think that yes I would like to say by the end of the year at least the rudiments but we should have something within the year and the following year.”
In contrast, last month, Trump said he would be putting forward a plan shortly after his nominee for Health and Human Services secretary, Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), is approved by the Senate, a far faster timetable.
“We’re going to be submitting, as soon as our secretary is approved, almost simultaneously, shortly thereafter, a plan,” Trump said then.
Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) likewise said last week that he wanted to move ObamaCare legislation by the end of the “first quarter,” meaning by the end of March.
Trump on Sunday, though, acknowledged that the work to replace ObamaCare is “very complicated.”
Trump has called for repealing and replacing the law “essentially simultaneously.”
If he sticks by that, pushing a replacement plan into next year could mean delaying passing a repeal bill as well.
Republican congressional leaders, though, have put forward the idea of passing repeal with just some pieces of a replacement attached and then passing a series of other, small bills later on as part of a replacement plan.