Our outgoing president has a few thoughts on how Democrats should respond to Republican efforts to repeal healthcare reform and replace it with they-don't-know-yet. Those thoughts can be summarized as you break it, you bought it.
In the closed-door meeting, the President urged fellow Democrats to not "rescue" Republicans by helping them pass replacement measures, according to sources in the room.
He also floated this idea: Start referring to the GOP's new plan as "Trumpcare."
I don't know about the second half of that. Donald Trump does not himself give a damn what Republicans do about health care, or anything else, and I have the gut feeling that 2017 will give ample other opportunities to tar Trump with all the stupid things that he himself will do. It's Paul Ryan and the rest of the Republican Congress that are dead set on making sure millions of Americans are stripped of health care; shifting the blame to Trump would only serve to deflect it from them.
There's no need to pin Obamacare repeal on the giant talking orange. Pin it on all the archconservative bastards looking to run for president after Trump crashes and burns. They’re the ones who promised to repeal it to begin with. They’re the ones pretending their efforts won’t hurt anyone, or cost billions, or send healthcare costs spiraling up yet again.
The first part, though, is incontrovertible. There's absolutely no reason to give Republicans cover while they're stripping healthcare reform efforts that have saved lives and saved a tremendous amount of money in order to replace those reforms with their own plan of telling all those people to kindly go to hell. If they want to drive the car, fine, but there's no reason to be the guy holding their beer.