by Matthew Rusling
WASHINGTON, July 26 (Xinhua) -- The road ahead for U.S. President Donald Trump's goal to repeal and replace the healthcare system will be uncertain, and is taking many twists and turns, experts said.
Trump on Tuesday won a narrow victory when the Senate voted to proceed with debate on new healthcare legislation, as the president has promised to repeal and replace the current healthcare law, known as Obamacare. But on Wednesday, a Senate amendment to roll back Obamacare without a replacement was defeated.
Healthcare has been a hot button issue for several years, and the GOP has kept blasting the controversial Obamacare law. Critics say Obamacare is often unaffordable for many Americans, and punishes Americans with fines for not opting into this often expensive plan and props up insurance companies with taxpayer dollars. Supporters say the plan has given millions of Americans access to health insurance who previously didn't have it.
"It will take time to work through the various issues, and it is not clear if there is a winning coalition to repeal Obamacare," Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Darrell West told Xinhua.
"We face an open-ended situation with the bill and it will take a series of votes to determine what the bill will look like," West said, suggesting that "the politics will be very complicated because this is a polarizing issue and there are strong feelings on every side of this issue."
"The only thing for sure is that healthcare will remain a big issue in the 2018 congressional elections," he added.
Dan Mahaffee, senior vice president and director of policy at the Center for the Study of Congress and the Presidency, told Xinhua:
"Certainly the GOP cleared a significant hurdle by opening it up for debate, but only by the narrowest of margins," he said, referring to Tuesday's 50-50 vote with Vice President Mike Pence using his constitutional prerogative to break the tie.
The following vote on Wednesday for a full repeal of Obamacare without a replacement turned out to be a 55-45 rejection in the Senate, leaving the coming debate and the amendment process to be where the future of healthcare legislation is determined.
"The GOP will have to carefully craft a measure that avoids losing two Senators, and there's still quite a bit of back-and-forth remaining in terms of what plans are offered," said Mahaffee.
He stressed that "if they cannot move on healthcare, one would think that both the Trump Administration and the GOP Congress would try to pivot quickly to tax reform and infrastructure, but given the limited time on the calendar and the continued attention to the Russia investigation, that pivot becomes more and more difficult with each day."
