Late Friday night and early into Saturday morning, President Donald Trump fired off tweets continuing to defend his latest moves in undermining Obamacare.
Trump’s latest health care tweets come on the heels of his refusal to pay Obamacare’s cost-sharing reduction payments (CSRs) and his announcement of an executive order making it easier for individuals to buy insurance plans that don’t comply with Obamacare requirements.
Trump’s Friday night tweets echoed what he tweeted earlier that morning by putting pressure on Democrats to cooperate with his attempts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act.
Money pouring into Insurance Companies profits, under the guise of ObamaCare, is over. They have made a fortune.
Dems must get smart & deal!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 14, 2017
ObamaCare is causing such grief and tragedy for so many. It is being dismantled but in the meantime, premiums & deductibles are way up!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 14, 2017
Trump’s Saturday morning tweets piggybacked off the justification he gave Friday on cutting off CSRs by saying the payments had only served to prop up the stock prices of insurance companies.
Health Insurance stocks, which have gone through the roof during the ObamaCare years, plunged yesterday after I ended their Dems windfall!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 14, 2017
Very proud of my Executive Order which will allow greatly expanded access and far lower costs for HealthCare. Millions of people benefit!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 14, 2017
CSRs were regular subsidies to insurance companies authorized by the executive branch until Thursday night. These subsidies were made to lower the cost of health care for low-income people — those earning between 100 and 250 percent of the federal poverty line — buying insurance on Obamacare’s exchanges.
The decision to end the payments came after the Trump administration threatened to cut off the subsidies for months. The constant threat has caused instability in the health care marketplaces as insurers raised their rates or left areas altogether out of fear that Trump would cut off the crucial subsidies.
Without CSRs, health care markets risk becoming even more destabilized. The Congressional Budget Office projected in August that cutting off CSRs would increase the federal deficit nearly $200 billion between 2017 and 2026, and that individuals whose care depended on the payments could see 20 percent higher premiums by 2018, and 25 percent higher premiums by 2020.
