Trump wavers on support of bipartisan ACA subsidy deal - Entrepreneur Generations

"Yet another last-ditch effort to tackle the nation’s health-care system stalled within hours of its release by a bipartisan pair of senators Tuesday, with President Trump sending mixed signals and Republicans either declining to endorse the proposal or outright opposing it," The Washington Post reports.

Senators Lamar Alexander  (R-Tenn.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) reached a compromise yesterday that would authorize federal cost-sharing subsidies for the next two years while granting states more flexibility in regulating health coverage under the ACA. The subsidies help offset the cost to insurers of low-cost plans for lower-income Americans. Because insurers are still required to offer those low-cost plans even without the subsidies, critics say insurers will likely withdraw from poorer and rural areas where more people purchase the low-cost plans. That could leave some counties, especially in rural areas, without any ACA insurers.

President Trump appeared to support the compromise yesterday, but in a tweet today said "I am supportive of Lamar as a person & also of the process, but I can never support bailing out ins. co's who have made a fortune w/ O'care."

"But that message may have been more of a caveat than a rejection," Robert Pear and Thomas Kaplan report for The New York Times. Alexander told the Times that the president called him today and wanted to be "encouraging" about the agreement. Trump, Alexander said, "intends to review it carefully to see if he wants to add anything to it" and "wants to reserve his options."

For more coverage on this story, see the item on our Kentucky Health News blog.




from The Rural Blog http://ift.tt/2gQrzuO Trump wavers on support of bipartisan ACA subsidy deal - Entrepreneur Generations

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