Trump says new healthcare plan will drive insurance costs down

Washington, March 14 (IANS) President Donald Trump said that the new healthcare plan proposed by Republican lawmakers will ensure that medical insurance costs begin to come down in "a little while".

Trump said that the GOP proposal will push health insurance costs "down, down, down," adding that "more competition and less regulation will finally bring down the cost of care" within one or two years.

Trump met at the White House with several "victims" of the Affordable Care Act -- known as 'Obamacare' -- signed in 2010 by Barack Obama and he expressed frustration because, in his judgment, the press is making it look "wonderful", Efe news reported.

"So the press is making it (Obamacare) look so wonderful that if we end it, everyone's going to say, 'Oh, remember how great Obamacare used to be? Remember how wonderful it used to be? It used to be so great?'" the President told reporters.

"It's a little bit like President Obama. When he left, people liked him. When he was here, people didn't like him so much," Trump said, adding his prediction that in any event the ACA will collapse.

The President promised that under the plan proposed to replace Obamacare, Americans will be able to select the healthcare plans they want and the doctors they want to treat them.

Obama had promised that if Americans liked their then-current healthcare plans they would be able to retain them under his reform, but Trump said that that never proved to be the case.

The president also said that the current healthcare system only helps a "small" number of people, a reference to the approximately 20 million Americans who have acquired healthcare coverage under Obamacare.

Two House committees last week approved the Republican proposals to eliminate Obamacare, a move that he has called the first of three phases whereby the current system will be replaced.