Trump surprises both parties with push to revive health-care battle

“Let me tell you exactly what my message is: The Republican Party will soon be known as the party of health care,” he told reporters before the lunch. “You watch.”

But neither the White House nor Republicans in Congress have offered a new plan to replace the comprehensive Obama-era law, which was passed nearly a decade ago and has grown in popularity since Trump was elected…

But by resurfacing old battles about stripping away popular elements of the current health-care system, Trump is likely to embolden and unite Democrats who seek to make health care a top issue in 2020, said Amy Walter, national editor of the Cook Political Report. Democrats who have been divided in recent months over proposed Medicare-for-all legislation can now coalesce around the idea of protecting the ACA’s most popular provisions, she said.

“If you’re a Republican thinking about 2020 right now, you want to be on offense on health care, not defense,” she said. “And the only way to do that is to make the focus on what Democrats want to do — on Medicare-for-all — rather than making it on what the president and the White House are suggesting.”