Washington, Mar 26 (EFE).- President Donald Trump on Sunday blamed Republican lawmakers from the ultraconservative Freedom Caucus for the failure of the healthcare bill he had strongly backed, legislation that last week was withdrawn by the Republican House leadership due to the lack of support within the GOP.
“Democrats are smiling in D.C. that the Freedom Caucus, with the help of Club For Growth and Heritage, have saved Planned Parenthood & Ocare!” Trump tweeted on Sunday.
The president referred in that tweet to the healthcare reform known as Obamacare promulgated by then-President Barack Obama that the magnate wanted to replace with the bill drafted by Republican lawmakers and strongly backed by him.
The conservative proposal included withdrawing funds from Planned Parenthood, the largest US family planning organization and which has received extensive criticism from Republicans. However, the bill was withdrawn last Friday after failing to muster sufficient support among the Republican House members to be approved if it were to have been brought up for a vote.
The bill failed to move forward, in part, because of objections of about 30 lawmakers with the Freedom Caucus. A total of 216 votes were needed to approve the legislation, but the Freedom Caucus opposed the bill because they wanted fewer regulations in it and for people to be able to select what medical care they wanted covered in their healthcare insurance plans.
Caucus leader Mark Meadows said Sunday that the bill’s failure was not the end of the discussion of healthcare reform. Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act, a law designed to increase the quality of health insurance and make it accessible to citizens with low incomes, has provided medical coverage to more than 20 million people who did not have it before. Many, if not all of those people would have lost their health care coverage under the now-shelved Republican plan.