Obamacare Lives

Trump's moves to “sabotage” Obamacare are hardly a death blow for the health law.

Surgery aboard United States Navy hospital ship Relief (AH-1), circa 1937.Navy Medicine / WIkimedia


“Health insurance stocks,” President Donald Trump gloated on Twitter on Saturday, “which have gone through the roof during the ObamaCare years, plunged yesterday after I ended their Dems windfall!”

The tweet was vintage Trump, combining faux-populism, enthusiastic punctuation, and boisterous ignorance (in the long run, his move could actually increase federal payments to insurers). But what was he blathering on about anyway?

On Thursday, Trump made not one but two big moves relating to Obamacare. He announced the end of government payments for “cost sharing reductions” (CSR) subsidies, and he released an executive order that opened the door for bare-bones health plans, free of Obamacare mandates. His actions have been broadly blasted asObamacare Sabotage.”

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