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President Trump told the Wall Street Journal that he’s considering a new strategy to force Democrats to help him repeal the Affordable Care Act:
Nearly three weeks after Republican infighting sank an overhaul of the Affordable Care Act, President Donald Trump dug back into the battle on Wednesday, threatening to withhold payments to insurers to force Democrats to the negotiating table.
In an interview in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump said he was still considering what to do about the payments approved by his Democratic predecessor, President Barack Obama, which some Republicans contend are unconstitutional. Their abrupt disappearance could trigger an insurance meltdown that causes the collapse of the 2010 health law, forcing lawmakers to return to a bruising debate over its future.
Said Trump: “Obamacare is dead next month if it doesn’t get that money. I haven’t made my viewpoint clear yet. I don’t want people to get hurt…. What I think should happen and will happen is the Democrats will start calling me and negotiating.”
Put more clearly, Trump is saying that to prevent people from getting hurt, he’s going hurt people… and that will force Democrats to give him what he wants.
Steve Benen notes the strategy makes no sense politically:
What Trump is describing is a form of political suicide: he’s publicly describing a scenario in which he alone starts hurting Americans, on purpose, so that everyone will know exactly who to blame…
Trump’s original strategy involved allowing the Affordable Care Act to whither through neglect and then avoid responsibility, insisting he had nothing to do with the law’s creation. That, too, was badly flawed, but it was least borderline coherent. This latest gambit is simply bonkers: the president is prepared to take it upon himself to create a crisis that doesn’t currently exist, guaranteeing that Americans blame him directly for the ensuing disaster.
It’s hard to believe Republican lawmakers would back Trump up on this approach.
Recent polling from the Kaiser Family Foundation shows that 61% of all Americans say Trump and Republicans are responsible for problems with the ACA going forward and that 75% of all Americans say Trump and his administration “should do what they can to make ACA work.”
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