White House looks to bounce back after health care loss

WASHINGTON (AP) – Regrouping after a rocky few weeks, the White House declared Monday that President Donald Trump doesn’t consider the health care battle to be over, suggesting he may turn to Democrats to help him overhaul the system after his own party rejected his proposal.

The sudden interest in bipartisanship is a shift for a president who has spent months mocking Democratic leaders as inept. And Democrats indicated they have no interest if his intent is still to dismantle “Obamacare.”

But Trump’s interest reflects the strained state of his relations with conservatives in his party and his search for a way to regain his footing after the painful withdrawal of his health care legislation last Friday.

“I don’t think we’ve seen the end of health care,” White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Monday, pointing to “a series of fits and starts” that marked the process that led to passage of President Barack Obama’s health care law, too, in 2010.

Trump’s failure to win the votes to pass his bill has prompted the new president to rethink how he intends to promote his agenda in Congress.