Senate Majority Leader John Thune may have thrown a stick of dynamite in any potential path forward to end the government shutdown when he admitted President Donald Trump wants to overhaul Obamacare.
The two parties have been locked in a standoff over the Democrats’ demand that an extension of the Affordable Care Act tax credits be included in the short-term spending deal.
If not extended, ACA premiums are expected to skyrocket for the coming year.
But Republicans have refused to even discuss health care until Democrats get on board with their bill to reopen the government.
However, Thune’s admission suggests that even if Democrats agreed, the GOP’s goal would not be to extend subsidies after they have long tried to chip away at President Obama’s landmark legislation.
“The fundamental problem here is the underlying program, which again needs to be reformed,” Thune said on CNBC. “The president wants to do that. The president would like to overhaul Obamacare, and give people health insurance that is higher quality and more affordable.”
Thune acknowledged that the Affordable Care Act is now embedded in the U.S. He said there were conversations “ripe to be had.” He believes the president was open to sitting down and working on solutions that “improve quality and affordability.”
The problem is premiums are slated to jump just months from now, and the president has never produced his own health care plan after attempting to overturn Obamacare during his first term.
During the election season, Trump famously said during the presidential debate that he had “concepts of a plan.”
Just ahead of the 2020 election, Trump also told 60 Minutes that he had a comprehensive health care plan ready to replace the Affordable Care Act. But he did not go into detail and his press secretary handed correspondent Lesley Stahl a large book and said it was his health care plan, but all it contained was executive orders and congressional initiatives.
A full five years later, this week at the White House, the president said Obamacare is a horrible mess and said “we want to make it better.”
The Daily Beast reached out to the White House to inquire about the president’s plans to release his healthcare plan.
Thune and Trump were not the only ones bashing the Affordable Care Act as the shutdown continues. Other Republicans have blasted the affordability of the program and deemed it a failure, but there have not been any recent alternatives proposed despite years of criticism.
House Speaker Mike Johnson was asked about how he would fix Obamacare while taking questions on C-SPAN on Thursday.
He gave a vague answer about having ideas but did not go into any detail.
“There’s a lot of improvements that are needed,” Johnson said. “Republicans are the party that have the ideas to do that.”
He said the Doctor’s Caucus is working around the clock, putting together ideas.
“We have a lot of ideas to fix it,” Johnson said. “Some people say, Why can’t you just rip Obamacare out at the roots and start over? It’s very, very complicated.”
He argued the GOP demonstrated they can improve it by reforming Medicaid in Trump’s tax law. Democrats have torched that as a massive cut of funding to the program that provides coverage for low-income Americans.
The speaker on Thursday was also asked about reducing health care costs overall, not just addressing insurance and gave a similar answer.
“We have a lots of ideas on the table. We’ve been trying to advance some of those, and we will in the days ahead,” Johnson said. “Health care is a major problem in the country. Everybody acknowledges it. We’re not just talking about it. We’re bringing ideas to the table.”
The Speaker also mentioned a “90-minute slide show” he could show him “if he had time.” The Daily Beast has requested a copy.
In his press conference on Thursday, Johnson blasted Democrats for making the shutdown about health care and insisted it was “always going to be discussed” but not with the government shut down.
While Republicans blast the Affordable Care Act as a whole as unaffordable and problematic, the clock continues to tick down.
If expiring enhanced tax credits are not extended, ACA marketplace premiums are expected to double on average next year, according to analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF). Democrats warn those notices will soon be hitting mailboxes across the country if they haven’t started already.
Since the enhanced credits were introduced in 2021 and then extended, enrollment in the ACA marketplace has jumped from 11 million to 24 million people and many qualified for the credits, so a massive swath of Americans will be hit with higher costs.
Despite broad concerns about the underlying issues with the U.S. health care system, the vast majority of Americans support extending the enhanced ACA tax credits.
The KFF poll found 78 percent of adults say Congress should extend them, including 92 percent of Democrats, 82 percent of Independents and 59 percent of Republicans.
The intensifying discussion about overhauling Obamacare without providing details does not just pose more challenges for getting out of the shutdown, but it could be a huge mess in the upcoming midterms.
During Trump’s first term in 2018, Democrats made saving the ACA after Republicans tried to overturn it their central message on the campaign trail which helped usher in a blue wave.
Premiums have climbed since then, but no clear alternative has materialized, and polling shows the ACA remains more favorable than not among Americans.
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