President Donald Trump will cut off subsidy payments to insurers selling Obamacare coverage in its most aggressive move yet to undermine the health law, the White House announced Thursday night.
“Based on guidance from the Department of Justice, the Department of Health and Human Services has concluded that there is no appropriation for cost-sharing reduction payments to insurance companies under Obamacare,” Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement emailed at 10:47 p.m. Thursday.
“In light of this analysis, the Government cannot lawfully make the cost-sharing reduction payments. …The bailout of insurance companies through these unlawful payments is yet another example of how the previous administration abused taxpayer dollars and skirted the law to prop up a broken system.”
The subsidies, worth an estimated $7 billion this year and paid out in monthly installments, may stop almost immediately. POLITICO reported the development earlier Thursday, citing several sources.
The announcement – coming hours after Trump signed an executive order calling for new regulations to encourage cheap, loosely regulated health plans – delivered a double whammy to Obamacare after months of failed GOP efforts to repeal the law. With open enrollment for the 2018 plan year set to launch in two weeks, the moves seem aimed at dismantling the law through executive actions.
“Trump said Obamacare would implode. He did not say he would light the match,” said state Rep. Garnet Coleman, a Houston Democrat.
