President Donald Trump on Wednesday had suggested that he would oppose a bipartisan deal to help and stabilize the Obamacare, reversing his comments that he made only a day earlier.
Trump in his tweet wrote that he was “supportive” of the deal’s architect, Senate Health Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander, as well as the Senate’s process, but said he would “never support bailing out” the insurance companies, saying they “have made a fortune” under the Obamacare.
Trump stopped short of saying he would veto the measure, however.
While speaking to the reporters later Wednesday Trump had said, “If something can happen, that’s fine, but I won’t do anything to enrich the insurance companies.”
The president has also sent a series of mixed signals on the legislation that was drafted by Alexander and Senator Patty Murray, the ranking member on the Health Committee.
The measure would also fund insurer’s subsidies a step that is also known as cost-sharing reduction payments for two more years while allowing the states greater flexibility to waive the health-care law’s rules.
Trump also announced last week, that he would cut off the payments on the whole, a move that certain experts said would cause the insurance premiums to skyrocket.
But the president Trump on Tuesday signaled that he may actually support the proposal, calling it to be “a short-term solution so that we don’t have this very dangerous little period” for insurance companies. Later in the evening, he simply backtracked on those comments.
“While I commend the bipartisan work being done by Senators Alexander and Murray — and I do commend it — I continue to believe Congress must find a solution to the ObamaCare mess instead of providing bailouts to insurance companies,” Trump had said in a speech to the conservative Heritage Foundation.
The president’s inability to take a clear, fixed position on this particular issue has frustrated many on and off the Capitol Hill.
Alexander on Wednesday had said that Trump had called him earlier in the morning to express much optimism about the agreement. “He called me to say that number one, he wanted to be encouraging about the bipartisan agreement that Sen. Murray and I announced yesterday,” he said.
The Tennessee senator also said, however, that the President Trump “intends to review it carefully to see if he wants to add anything to it.”
Trump came close to backing the deal on Tuesday, even as he railed against the insurance companies and declared that “Obamacare is virtually dead.”
“It will get us over this intermediate hump,” Trump had said at a news conference with the Greek prime minister.