Trump Defends Cutting Subsidies For Low-Income Obamacare Recipients
By MATT SHUHAM Published OCTOBER 13, 2017 2:58 PM
President Donald Trump on Friday justified his refusal to pay Obamacare’s cost-sharing reduction payments (CSRs) by saying the payments had only served to prop up the stock prices of insurance companies.
Until Thursday night, CSRs were regular subsidies to insurance companies, authorized by the executive branch, in order to lessen the cost of health care for low-income people — those earning between 100 and 250 percent of the federal poverty line — buying insurance on Obamacare’s exchanges.
In short: The government paid insurance companies to provide cheaper plans to low-income people.
“If you take a look at CSR payments, that money is going to insurance companies to prop up insurance companies,” Trump told reporters on his way to Marine One.
A reporter responded that the payments were meant to help low-income people afford insurance.
“That money is going to insurance companies to lift up their stock price,” Trump said. “And that’s not what I’m about.”
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