President Donald Trump declared Monday that Obamacare is already “dead,” following decisions he made that will force Congress to take up the healthcare law or otherwise risk legal and political fallout.
“Obamacare is finished,” the president said ahead of a Cabinet meeting at the White House. “It’s dead. It’s gone. … You shouldn’t even mention it. It’s gone. There is no such thing as Obamacare anymore.”
Trump’s comments come days after he signed an executive order to direct various agencies to look for areas to loosen Obamacare’s mandates, and after a decision to stop funding cost-sharing reduction subsidies, which he and other Republicans say must be appropriated by Congress.
Unless Congress acts, the latter decision is expected to cause the subsidies on premiums to rise by about 20 percent on average for middle-tiered plans. The move will mostly affect middle-income Americans who do not receive assistance paying for premiums, and do not receive coverage through the government or through an employer.
Trump said his decision on the subsidies has reignited debates on healthcare, and predicted that Congress would arrive at a short-term fix with Democrats but predicted that a longer-term fix would involve only Republicans, in March or April of next year.
“Republicans are meeting with Democrats because of what I did with the CSRs,” Trump said, referring to the cost-sharing reduction subsidies. “If I didn’t cut the CSRs, they wouldn’t be meeting, they’d be having lunch and enjoying themselves, all right? They’re right now having emergency meetings to have a short-term fix of healthcare.”
Members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee had been meeting to discuss the payments since September, but the discussions stopped as Republicans began making a last-ditch attempt for the year to repeal Obamacare along party lines, and ending the funds has created greater urgency among members of both parties who already called for Congress to appropriate the funds.
Trump called Obamacare a “concept that couldn’t have worked and said he believed that Democrats would be “blamed for the mess.”
“This is an Obamacare mess,” he said. “When the premiums go up, that has nothing to do with anything other than the fact that we had poor healthcare, delivered poorly, written poorly, approved by the Democrats. It was called Obamacare.”
He lamented the inability of Republicans to fullfill their seven-year promise to repeal and replace Obamacare. The Senate failed to pass a bill this summer that included a surprise, fatal vote against a bill that would have narrowly repealed the law, cast by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., whom the president called out by name.
Trump said he had “great relationship with may senators,” particularly Republicans.
“But we’re not getting the job done,” he said. “And I’m not going to blame myself, I’ll be honest. They’re not getting the job done.”
