WASHINGTON (Reuters)—A bipartisan deal from two U.S. senators to stabilize Obamacare by restoring subsidies to health insurers ran into trouble on Wednesday with the White House saying President Donald Trump now opposes it and a senior Senate Republican saying it has stalled.
House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan also signaled opposition to the deal announced on Tuesday by Republican Lamar Alexander and Democrat Patty Murray to shore up Obamacare by reviving billions of dollars of federal subsidies to insurers for two years to help lower-income Americans obtain medical coverage.
Alexander said on Wednesday Trump had “completely engineered” the bipartisan proposal but the president backed away from support he had expressed a day earlier.
On Tuesday, Trump said the White House was involved in the negotiations and that the agreement was “a very good solution” short-term approach but later on Tuesday and then on Wednesday said he would not support a plan that enriched insurance companies.
Trump has cut off subsidies to the companies, saying Congress has not provided money for them and that they enrich insurers.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said Trump does not support the deal in its current form, although she called it “a good step in the right direction.”
“Look, we’ve said all along that we want something that doesn’t just bail out the insurance companies but actually provides relief for all Americans,” she said at a briefing. “And this bill doesn’t address that fact.”
Senator John Thune, a member of the Senate Republican leadership, said the Alexander-Murray agreement has “stalled out” and that its future was an “open question.” Republicans have a 52-48 Senate majority but only a few have publicly embraced the plan.
“Lamar Alexander’s working on it very hard from our side. And if something can happen, that’s fine,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “But I won’t do anything to enrich the insurance companies. . . . They’ve been enriched by Obamacare like nothing anybody’s ever seen before.”
Insurers say they do not profit from the subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, Democratic former President Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement dubbed Obamacare, but pass them on directly to consumers to reduce deductibles, co-payments and other out-of-pocket medical expenses for low-income people.
Ending the subsidies, which are called cost-sharing reduction payments, could create chaos in the 2018 health insurance markets set up under Obamacare.
Some leading insurers, including UnitedHealth Group, Aetna Inc and Humana Inc, have largely exited those markets, citing financial losses. Others including Anthem Inc have significantly reduced their presence in the state-based markets.