After becoming the first Democrat to voice support for repealing Obamacare, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia is taking back his claim that he “will vote tomorrow to repeal” the law. Instead, he said, he is more concerned with fixing it than getting rid of it.
“I have never supported repealing the Affordable Care Act because I came to Washington to find solutions to our country’s problems,” Manchin said in a statement, adding that Americans “cannot go back to the days” before certain Obamacare provisions had been implemented, such as coverage for pre-existing conditions. Nonetheless, he pointed out that he supported some delays to the law, such as the individual mandate, as well as allowing people to renew their plans canceled by the law’s regulations.
“We should be working together to identify which parts of the law are broken and need to be fixed,” he continued. “We may learn that some parts of the law can’t be repaired, and we should eliminate those parts entirely.”