US President Donald Trump has called the healthcare reform bill approved in May by the Republicans in the House of…
(Photo: AFP)
US President Donald Trump has called the healthcare reform bill approved in May by the Republicans in the House of Representatives "petty".
The President also called on his colleagues in the Senate to make it "more generous," sources from Congress told the media on Tuesday, Efe news reported.
A month after praising the House-approved bill and ensuring it was "incredibly well-crafted," Trump urged the senators to make substantial changes to the same bill, which has been designed to replace President Barack Obama's health reform implemented in 2010, but still needs the Senate's approval, according to legislative sources cited by media outlets CNN and The Hill.
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In particular, Trump believes the bill approved by the House does not go far enough to protect Americans who depend on health insurance under Obama's Health Care reform.
Doubts over the future of the bill in the Senate rose after the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued a report in May predicting that if the Republican reform is to go ahead, 23 million people in the US will lose their medical coverage within a decade.
In addition, the Republican majority in the Senate is much narrower than in the House of Representatives and, according to current rules, Trump would need the votes of the 52 Republican Senators plus eight Democrats on his side.
Realizing the difficulty of the reform's approval, the President suggested two weeks ago that the Senate changes its rules in order to pass the health law with a simple majority of 51 votes instead of 60 which are needed under current rules.
Trump has also vaguely suggested investing more money into the reform to make the US health care system "the best anywhere," something that may throw conservative Republicans who want to use the law to reduce the budget deficit further.
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