President Donald Trump outlined a pair of contradictory priorities for replacing the Affordable Care Act on Tuesday, suggesting that he’s willing to let Congress undo a decision he has been boasting about since Thursday.
The president bragged during a Rose Garden press conference with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras that he had ended ‘hundreds of millions of dollars a month’ in Obamacare-related subsidies to medical insurance companies.
Then he said he would support the passage of a bipartisan compromise in the U.S. Senate that would restore $106 million of them.
Shortly after the presidential press conference, Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington announced that they have reached a deal doing just that.
Trump said Tuesday that he’s open to a bipartisan Senate deal that would bridge the gap between Obamacare and a new system of state block-grants
The deal, announced moments after Trump spoke during a Rose Garden press conference, would restore $106 million in Obamacare subsidies the he boasted of ending
Of the subsidies, known as Cost Sharing Reduction payments, Trump said some in Congress had urged him ‘to continue to pay this,’ but ‘I said I’m not going to do it.’
Ultimately, he said, he favors a long term repeal-and-replace solution that sends block grants to the states instead of managing insurance markets from the Department of Health and Human Services.
‘Essentially that would be the plan,’ the president said. ‘Yes. Block grants.’
He added that ‘we really feel we have the votes’ to secure passage of that long term arrangement.
But getting from the status quo to his ideal, Trump claimed minutes later, could require the Alexander-Murray bill to ‘get us over this intermediate hump.’
The legislation would only be in effect for only two years, but would restore the payments that Trump ended just days ago. It would also states some added flexibility in which kinds of insurance policies are Obamacare-compliant.
Washington Sen. Patty Murray is the Democratic half of a duo that’s proposing a short-term Obamacare fix which would undo Trump’s decision from last Thursday
‘We think it’s a good solution and it got broad support when Patty and I talked about it at the Democratic caucus meeting,’ Democratic Senate Minority Leader Sen. Charles Schumer said at the Capitol
‘It is a short term solution so that we don’t have this very dangerous little period,’ he said, ‘including a dangerous period for insurance companies’ – the same corporate titans that he blasted in the press conference’s opening minutes.
‘If you look at insurance companies and take a good strong look at the numbers, you will see since the formation of Obamacare, they are up 400 per cent, 450 per cent, 250 per cent, 300 per cent. They’ve made a fortune,’ he said
‘Obamacare is everything but dead. The people aren’t gonna take it,’ he added.
And the Alexander-Murray bill would ‘not only save money but give people much better health care with a very, very much smaller premium spike.’
Trump earlier on Tuesday had called the Affordable Care Act ‘virtually dead’ and ‘a disgrace to our nation’
In signaling support, Trump said his administration had been involved in talks as it was hammered out. Alexander presented the proposal to colleagues at a Republican conference meeting in the Capitol on Tuesday.
Even if Trump were to formally back the final product, it would have to make it through hurdles in Congress.
It would be subject to a filibuster in a Senate chamber where many Republicans are strongly opposed to Obamacare and have tried and failed repeatedly to repeal it – something Trump also supports.
In the House, a deal that appeared to be saving Obamacare could draw strong conservative opposition, in a chamber where more than 60 Republicans voted against a recent hurricane relief bill.
The insurance industry, a major player in the Capitol, can be expected to back it.
Trump spoke during an Oval Office meeting with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras before their joint press conference, predicting that Obamacare is on its ‘final legs.’
‘We think it’s a good solution and it got broad support when Patty and I talked about it at the Democratic caucus meeting Tuesday,’ Democratic Senate Minority Leader Sen. Charles Schumer said at the Capitol.
He explained that it represented ‘growing consensus that in the short term we need stability in the markets. … The president has been sabotaging this bill and the agreement would undo much of that sabotage.’
Sen. Murray, too, said Trump has taken steps ‘to sabotage health care in our country,’ and suggested that ending the CSR payments would force consumers, not insurers, ‘to pay the price.’
Earlier on Tuesday, Trump pronounced the Obamacare system ‘virtually dead,’ ‘a disgrace to our nation’ and on its ‘last legs.’
‘We are solving the problem,’ he added.
He had boasted Monday of ending the payments, saying during a cabinet meeting that ‘I cut off the gravy train.’