Trump’s abrupt health care move shakes Washington
President criticized for passing the problem to Congress to solve
WASHINGTON President Donald Trump’s decision to abruptly cut off federal payments to insurers reverberated through the political world Saturday, putting pressure on Congress to take action to address the high premiums that American consumers could face and jolting the insurance industry.
Trump’s move late Thursday to end federal subsidies that help insurance companies reduce out-of-pocket costs for low- and middle-income consumers also could deepen the divide among Republicans over how to tackle the 2010 Affordable Care Act as the market opens in a little more than two weeks for people to sign up for health care.
Republican leaders have pledged to dismantle the law, but some in the GOP have balked, unwilling to risk the political fallout in states where large numbers of their constituents are insured through “Obamacare.”
In a tweet Saturday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called Trump’s decision an example of his “failure to lead.” The president, he said, “throws destructive bones to his base, then tells Congress to fix it.”
Trump’s move to cut the payments came on the heels of his executive order Thursday allowing consumers to buy insurance through association health plans across states lines. The move could help millions of consumers find access to cheaper insurance plans, but it could drive them into alternative plans that skirt the law’s consumer protections and minimum coverage requirements.
In a pair of tweets early Saturday, Trump celebrated his strikes against President Barack Obama’s signature health care law and reveled in the damage it had done to insurance stock prices, which fell sharply Friday on news he was ending the subsidies.
“Health Insurance stocks, which have gone through the roof during the ObamaCare years, plunged yesterday after I ended their Dems windfall!” he wrote in one tweet.
The Trump administration, and a group of House Republicans who went to court to challenge the subsidies, say the payments violate the Constitution because they were never specifically authorized by Congress, which controls the federal government’s purse strings.
The federal subsidies, which total about $7 billion this year, benefit more than 6 million people, many of whom live in states that backed Trump in the 2016 presidential election.
Ending the payments will hit consumers’ wallets because the health care law still requires insurance companies to lower costs for their poorest customers. Insurers are likely to make up for those lost federal payments by raising premiums for consumers who buy their own insurance.
The Congressional Budget Office has estimated premiums could surge by 20 percent with the loss of subsidies.
A group of 19 Democratic state attorneys general is suing to block the move, which also has been denounced by insurance companies and medical groups, such as the American Heart Association.
Nevada’s Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval also criticized Trump’s actions, telling The Nevada Independent that ending the payments will be “devastating” to lower-income consumers.
“It’s going to hurt people. It’s going to hurt kids. It’s going to hurt families,” Sandoval said.