Bitter, renewed battles looming in Congress
WASHINGTON» President Donald Trump’s decision late Thursday to cut off crucial health-care subsidies has once again torn open the long-festering debate over the Affordable Care Act, increasing the potential for a government shutdown in December and ensuring that the issue will be central in next year’s midterm elections.
The move to end insurer subsidies for low-income patients could spike premiums by as much as 20 percent for those who purchase insurance on the individual market.
While Trump and Republican allies argued that former president Barack Obama’s signature healthcare reform law is fundamentally flawed, Democrats called the move an act of sabotage against the ACA and pledged to fight it.
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., told reporters Friday that any consequences from the decision could not be blamed on Democrats.
“Republicans in the House and Senate now own the health-care system in this country from top to bottom, and their destructive actions, and the actions of the president, are going to fall on their backs,” he said. “The American people will know exactly where to place the blame when their premiums shoot up and when millions lose coverage.”
Ahead of a Dec. 8 government funding deadline, Schumer declined to draw a hard line when asked whether Democrats would oppose any spending bill that did not include the cost-sharing payments.
“I think we’re going to have a very good opportunity in the [next spending bill] to get this done in a bipartisan way if we can’t get it done sooner,” he said.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., in an interview, made a starker declaration about Trump’s cancellation of the subsidies: “We have to try to put a stop to that immediately, these particular pieces of it, because people will die.”
Democrats can block any spending bill from passage in the Senate, where a 60vote supermajority is needed to pass most major legislation.
In the House, Democrats have frequently provided the majority of the votes for bills keeping the government open - giving them significant leverage should they choose to exert it.
Rep. Joe Crowley, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said Friday that continuing the health-care payments was already high on the party’s list of demands going into the last spending negotiation last month.
“It was a priority then, it’s a priority now, and it will be a priority in the future as well for us,” he said.
“What will help the Affordable Care Act work is stability, and what the president is doing is to purposely destabilize the system . . . . It’s a willful act of sabotage.”
Key conservatives, meanwhile, warned that any attempt to continue the subsidies, which were expected to total about $7 billion this year, would be met with fierce resistance.
Rep. Mark Walker, R-N.C., chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee, said the only way he and other GOP conservatives could stomach an extension of the subsidies would be as a bridge to a new, more conservative health-care system.
Trump’s move to end the subsidies and make other changes to health insurance markets by executive action, he said, could create new momentum for the type of health-care overhaul that Republicans have thus far failed to move through the Senate.
“This may create enough energy and buzz to say, ‘Okay, we’ve got to get back to the drawing board and do something pretty quick here,’” he said.
Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., who chairs the House Appropriations subcommittee overseeing health care, said in a recent interview that while he personally supports making the subsidy payments, they would be a tough sell to fellow Republicans who have opposed the Affordable Care Act at every turn.
“I think Democrats are naive on this if they think Republicans are all of a sudden going to vote in significant numbers to sustain a system that none of them have voted for,” he said.