Robert Donachie – Capitol Hill and Health Care Reporter on 10/18/2017
President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he could not support the bipartisan proposal to shore up Obamacare and stabilize the health insurance markets through 2019.
“I am supportive of Lamar as a person & also of the process, but I can never support bailing out ins co’s who have made a fortune w/ O’Care,” the president tweeted Wednesday morning.
I am supportive of Lamar as a person & also of the process, but I can never support bailing out ins co's who have made a fortune w/ O'Care.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 18, 2017
Trump said Tuesday evening at the Heritage Foundatation that he supports the efforts of Sens. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Patty Murray of Washington to fix the problems with Obamacare, but he insists that lawmakers “find a solution to the ObamaCare mess instead of providing bailouts to insurance companies.”
The Trump administration announced late Thursday evening that it will no longer fund a crucial feature of Obamacare that helps low-income Americans purchase health insurance on the Affordable Care Act state exchanges, known as cost-sharing reductions. The president and a number of conservative members of Congress label these subsidies as welfare, or bailouts, for insurance providers.
“The bailout of insurance companies through these unlawful payments is yet another example of how the previous administration abused taxpayer dollars and skirted the law to prop up a broken system,” the White House said in a statement. “Congress needs to repeal and replace the disastrous Obamacare law and provide real relief to the American people.”
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