Trump Threatens to Sabotage Health Care of Lower-Income Americans and Congress

Still Reeling from Legislative Loss

With no public events scheduled today to distract the president, Donald Trump returned to Twitter this afternoon to threaten to sabotage the health care of both lower-income Americans and Congress. 

“After seven years of ‘talking’ Repeal & Replace,” the president, still reeling from the Republican Senate’s failure to repeal ObamaCare, “the people of our great country are still being forced to live with imploding ObamaCare!”

“If a new HealthCare Bill is not approved quickly,” Trump – who previously advised he would be “president for all Americans” – continued, “BAILOUTS for Insurance Companies and BAILOUTS for Members of Congress will end very soon!”

The “bailouts” in question refer to the Cost Sharing Reduction (CSR) payments from the government, designed to decrease the amount that lower-income Americans have to pay for deductibles, copays and insurance. 

The move would devastate the insurance market, and as Daily Kos reported, top insurance CEOs are openly blaming Donald Trump’s threat of sabotage for rate hikes and empty markets. As the outlet reported:

This is all Donald Trump and his Republican team. They have repeatedly mused over cutting off the federal payments in order to intentionally sabotage the Obamacare insurance marketplace; the move immediately led to rate hikes on consumers from nervous insurers and plans to exit those markets outright rather than risk being stiffed. That was the point behind the Trump team’s threats: to intentionally cause a “death spiral” for the Affordable Care Act-provided plans, after which Trump could turn his ruddy face to the cameras and declare that the markets had “failed.”

On Friday, Massachusetts Democrat Joe Kennedy III told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that the president is “rooting for people to get hurt and for our economy to tank,” calling his frequent threats “stunning comments from the president of the United States.”

Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer also responded to the president’s threats:

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Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license