The Senate health-care bill has sharpened the central political question surrounding the 2017 Republican agenda: Will the voters who made Donald Trump president rebel?
Like the House health-care bill, the Senate version would roll back Obamacare’s expansion of insurance coverage under Medicaid. While cutting Obamacare’s taxes on the rich, it would shrink both subsidies and requirements on insurers for coverage on exchange marketplaces, leaving many beneficiaries with skimpier protection and higher deductibles.
Those changes threaten financial hardship for the very constituency that won Trump the 2016 Republican nomination and tipped the electoral votes that put him in the White House. They violate his explicit pledges to protect Medicaid from cuts and reduce their out of pocket expenses for health care.
Yet that doesn’t mean those voters will lash out if Congress enacts the cuts and Trump signs them. As an in-depth recent examination of the president’s supporters shows, they backed him for different reasons. CONT.
John Harwood, CNBC