A first Democratic senator has indicated he thinks it might be time to scrap Obamacare. While legislators should work to fix the law in the meantime, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia told Beckley’s Register Herald that he would support getting rid of the law entirely.
“I will vote tomorrow to repeal [the Affordable Care Act], but I want to fix the problems in it,” Manchin told an audience.
He described the law as a product that the government has failed to “sell.” Manchin made similar comments in November when he said Obamacare was “more than a rollout problem — there is a product problem.”
In July, before the law’s troubled rollout, Manchin said that he thought it needed more than just minor tweaks. “This is not a trim job,” he said of the needed changes to the bill. “This is a pretty good haircut that has to be looked upon.”
UPDATE: In a statement, Manchin walked back his claim that he would “vote tomorrow to repeal” the law. While he conceded that there are “some parts of the law [that] can’t be repaired, and we should eliminate those parts entirely,” Manchin clarified he is more focused on fixing Obamacare than trying to repeal it.