President Trump said Wednesday that he may force Democrats to negotiate with him on healthcare by withholding payments that help insurers reduce out-of-pocket medical expenses for patients.
Experts agree that halting the payments, called cost-sharing subsidies, would result in millions of people being dropped from plans that they purchased through the exchanges.
“I don’t want people to get hurt,” Trump said in a Wall Street Journal interview. “What I think should happen, and will happen, is the Democrats will start calling me and negotiating.”
The funds are being distributed and are expected to total $9 billion in 2017, but their future is uncertain because of a lawsuit that was appealed under the Obama administration. A federal judge sided with House Republicans in the lawsuit, which accuses the administration of illegally distributing cost-sharing reduction payments because they had not been appropriated by Congress.
Following that argument, Trump told the Wall Street Journal that the executive branch may lack legal authority to make the payments.
“He wasn’t allowed to do that,” Mr. Trump said about former President Barack Obama. “It’s actually a big story that a lot of people don’t know about. They’ll find out about it, perhaps.”
The administration has said that it has not decided how it will handle the payments. Healthcare groups, including payers and providers, sent a letter to Trump and to congressional leaders on Wednesday asking them to take “quick action” on the matter and warning them of the dire consequences of not administering the payments, including increasing the number of uninsured people and causing premiums to rise.
Much of Obamacare remains uncertain for insurers and medical providers. Republicans previously failed to coalesce over a bill to repeal Obamacare, called the American Health Care Act, and have continued to make changes to the bill. Centrist members of the party have expressed concern over people losing insurance protections under the bill, while conservative members of the House Freedom Caucus objected that the bill does not go far enough in repealing Obamacare and reducing the cost of premiums. GOP lawmakers have vowed to continue negotiations over the bill and have not ruled out returning from a two-week recess early to vote on a measure.
Trump said in his Wall Street Journal interview that his team was “very, very close” on new healthcare legislation, but also appeared to suggest Democrats should join in on negotiations, saying they should be begging him to help them save Obamacare and saying that they own the law.
Trump suggested in the interview that he might allow the payments to continue, because he said he understands that the public’s views on who owns the healthcare system shift.
“The longer I’m behind this desk and you have Obamacare, the more I would own it,” he said.
