President Trump called for the “hour of action” to commence in his inauguration speech earlier today.
One of those actions that many are awaiting for is a plan to repeal Obamacare. According to Terry Haines, political strategist and analyst for Evercore, that “hour of action” could actually take months to occur.
“Politically this situation is very volatile,” Haines told CNBC’s “Closing Bell” on Friday.
“The idea is that the current Affordable Health Care Act stays until there’s something new. They’re going to have to take months to design and replace,” Bell said.
Paul Ryan and the GOP had announced previously that there’s already a plan in place to repeal Obamacare.
So when asked why the Trump administration, which now controls both Houses in Congress, can’t speed up the process to repeal and replace, Haines said Congress is consulting with state leaders first.
“What the GOP wants to do, and it’s smart of them to do this, is they want to make sure they consult with the governors,” Haines said.
“Kevin McCarthy I think said this very well. If one of our critiques is that Congress made a mistake jamming everything down the state’s throats seven years ago, we don’t want to replicate that mistake. We need to take a little bit of time to do that, and that’s fair.”
However, even with Obamacare potentially replaced, Terry Haines doesn’t want to give off the idea that health care will return to pre-Obamacare standards.
“Markets very much want a clean repeal vote early on,” Haines said. “But it’s important for markets to understand that it doesn’t mean that we’re going back to status quo 2009 in health care.”
Source: CNBC
