Trump’s shutdown win just landed Republicans with a huge political headache
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trum...39015.html
EXCERPTS: [...] One tangible gain for Democrats in the shutdown drama was their highlighting of the ACA issue and attacks on Republicans for failing to fix health care...
Many Democrats are furious that their moderate Senate colleagues made a deal with Republicans to reopen the government because they see it as a betrayal of Americans on the health care issue. But Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, who helped broker the deal and joined seven others in the Democratic caucus to back it, told CNN’s Kate Bolduan the deal would show whether Republicans were serious.
“Finally, because of the shutdown fight, we’ve had a number of Republicans who have figured out that this is an issue for them,” the New Hampshire Democrat said. “So, now we’ll see. We’ll see if they are really going to work with us to make sure that Americans can afford their health insurance.”
Viewing Democratic tactics, a cynic might wonder whether the party, which failed to make the enhanced Obamacare credits permanent during the Biden administration, laid a trap for Republicans on an issue their rivals always failed to solve, especially under Trump.
[...] It’s the Trump ship that never sails. The president was back at it on Monday, promising an imminent solution to America’s growing health care crisis — on which he has repeatedly failed to deliver in the past.
[...] Trump’s fogginess on health care is nothing new. Repeated unfulfilled promises to act took their place ... in his first term. ... During the 2016 campaign, Trump pledged to repeal Obamacare and replace it with something “terrific.” At rallies, he promised Americans new health care that would cost less but be far better...
Early in his first term, Trump promised that change was on the way. “Despite what you hear in the press, healthcare is coming along great. We are talking to many groups and it will end in a beautiful picture!” he wrote on the website formerly known as Twitter in March 2017. The GOP failure to repeal Obamacare, partly because it couldn’t come up with an alternative, didn’t stop Trump’s sunny predictions...
Second term, same as the first. [...] Americans are still waiting for his wider solutions. ... It’s tearing at Republican Party unity. It’s even estranged Trump and one of his most outspoken supporters, Marjorie Taylor Greene. The Georgia representative broke ranks early in the shutdown to highlight ACA insurance premiums for her family that she said would double in price due to expiring subsidies. While no fan of the ACA, she lashed out at her own party.
[...] Greene might now be regarded as a MAGA heretic by some in Trump’s orbit. But her comments on health care raise another possibility — that she’s far more in tune with the economic insecurity felt by regular Americans...
[...] But some Republicans don’t buy the idea that the party is vulnerable on health care, arguing that Democrats would be blamed for higher costs. GOP Sen. Eric Schmitt told CNN that “I think people know that Democrats own Obamacare, and it’s been a disaster.”
Republicans argue that Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” domestic policy law had already made significant steps to make health care more affordable by loosening the power of insurance companies and by restoring choice and control, partly by handing more responsibility to the states. But multiple health care analysts and groups say that the bill’s cuts to Medicaid funding could leave millions vulnerable to losing coverage and threaten many rural hospitals with closure.
The administration has several initiatives designed to reduce the costs of prescription drugs for Americans. It plans to launch TrumpRx, a direct-to-consumer website, early next year. Last week, the president unveiled a plan to make certain obesity drugs available for as little as $149 in an arrangement that gives pharmaceutical firms like Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk tariff breaks. If this plan works, it could be lifesaving for many patients who can’t get the drugs through their insurers and can’t afford out-of-pocket prices to buy them.
The initiative reflects Trump’s willingness to use government power to intervene in markets, which has also been seen in other sectors, and which flies in the face of conservative orthodoxy. A plan he recently floated to send money directly to ACA policyholders, instead of offering subsidies, also seems to spring from a similar motivation to shake up the industry.
Yet the idea is fraught with uncertainties, including whether such payments would cover the shortfall of all the subsidies. Another question is whether it would simply make up the shortfall in subsidies to pay for premiums. Or would it be a separate payment that patients could use to pay for the costs of treatment directly?
In the latter case of a payment that bypasses insurance firms, recipients might be exposed to massive costs if they get an adverse diagnosis. Trump told Fox News on Monday evening that he didn’t want money to go to insurance companies but that it would go into a separate account so people could negotiate their own, better health insurance.
“They’re going to feel like entrepreneurs,” Trump said. But he gave no details of how such a complex scheme could help policyholders now, and did not explain how it would lower costs.
And spiking health costs don’t only afflict ACA policyholders. If the government sent cash to certain Americans, how would that be fair to other taxpayers? And wouldn’t state-financed payments for health care go against everything the GOP believes?
Such thorny questions, and the president’s past failures to deliver on health care, explain the Republican Party’s new but familiar political nightmare on an issue that causes anxiety for tens of millions of voters.
Nov 11, 2025 02:05 AM
