Yesterday Trump announced that Obamacare was dead and gone.
But today Trump has endorsed a bipartisan deal – what he says is a ‘short term deal’ – to restore bailouts to the insurance companies:
WATCH: Trump endorses 2-year bipartisan plan to stabilize Obamacare one day after saying the law was dead. pic.twitter.com/gcMFKX5qiD
— CAP Action (@CAPAction) October 17, 2017
Key senators announced a bipartisan deal Tuesday to fix parts of the nation’s healthcare law and head off large premium increases faced by consumers in some states.
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Health Committee, announced the tentative agreement with the top Democrat on the panel, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.).
The agreement would continue cost-sharing payments to health insurers that President Trump eliminated last week.
“President Trump has encouraged this,” Alexander told reporters.
Trump, at a news conference with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, appeared to endorse the deal: “We have been involved, and this is a short-term deal,” he said, adding that it would last for “the next year or two” so that “we don’t have this dangerous little period.”
Alexander said he spoke to the president twice recently, including Saturday, when Trump encouraged him to find a bipartisan solution.
“He said he doesn’t want people to be hurt during these next two years by the possibility of rising premiums or by not being able to buy insurance,” Alexander said.
It actually makes some sense for Trump to support a short-term effort by Congress to restore these subsidies, as Trump cited the lack of ‘appropriation’ as the reason to stop these payments.
But it does somewhat contradict his ‘dead and gone’ declaration from yesterday. Of course Trump was exaggerating, perhaps for clarity on his intention to see Obamacare repealed. But this reinstatement of the subsidies, even for the short term, gives life back to Obamacare and it would seem in two years this appropriation could be granted again.
There’s still pressure on Congress to repeal Obamacare, but that pressure seems somewhat negated now with this endorsement.