Peter Morici, Newsmax Finance Insider and economist at the University of Maryland, told Newsmax TV that both major political parties are adopting the wrong strategy concerning the Obamacare healthcare law.
“The left is behaving as if there's nothing wrong with Obamacare and we can keep going as we are,” he recently told “America Talks Live.”
“And the right is behaving as if we can erase it completely and that all the expectations that have been established by Obamacare can be ignored. And then that the Republicans won't suffer a terrible electoral setback in 2018,” he told host Steve Malzberg. “Both are wrong,” he said.
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Republican U.S. lawmakers expect to unveil this week the text of long-awaited legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare, one of Trump's top legislative priorities, a senior Republican congressional aide told Reuters.
“We're going to have a program, it's going to have attributes of Obamacare in that it's going to provide subsidies for people, it's probably gradually over time going to wean some people off of Medicaid, and we're going to have more people that are not covered simply because they choose not to be covered and they're not covered by some kind of mandate,” he said.
“Finally, we'll probably have a program that does something about the people that can't be insured otherwise,” he said. “People with severe disabilities, significant pre-existing conditions,” he explained.
Since taking office in January, Trump has pressed his fellow Republicans who control Congress to act quickly to dismantle former Democratic President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act and pass a plan to replace it, but lawmakers in the party have differed on the specifics, Reuters reported.
The aide cited progress in meetings and phone calls starting on Friday and lasting through the weekend involving House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, White House budget chief Mick Mulvaney, Trump domestic policy adviser Andrew Bremberg and others.
Democrats have warned that Republicans risk throwing the entire U.S. healthcare system into chaos by repealing the 2010 law that was passed by congressional Democrats over united Republican opposition. Republicans condemn it as a government overreach, and Trump has called it a "disaster."
However, Morici wonders if the verbal mudslinging is really helping matters.
“What we've devolved to is a situation where the left considers what we believe not to be wrong, but to be evil,” Morici said. “Not something that can be tolerated by the civilized peoples of the world who live on the two coasts,” he said.
“That essentially means we're at war and when you're at war it's OK to lie. It's OK to put out disinformation,” he said. “It's OK to do whatever means are necessary to deal with this criminal element. They treat us like we're Nazis,” he said.
(Newsmax wire services contributed to this report).
Peter Morici is an economist and business professor at the University of Maryland, and a national columnist. He tweets @pmorici1
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