‘The insurance will be better. It’ll cost less. Everybody’s going to be happy,’ the president said.
President Donald Trump this week elaborated more on how he would deal with health care subsidies and the Affordable Care Act (ACA), suggesting an account for people where payments can be made for health-related issues.
The government shutdown that started Oct. 1 and ended Nov. 12 was, in part, due to a disagreement on how to handle health care subsidies that are due to expire at the end of the year.
Over the weekend, Trump wrote in a Nov. 8 post on Truth Social that Senate Republicans should direct hundreds of billions in funding to people’s accounts, away from insurance companies, to purchase their own health insurance.
When asked about that post during a Fox News interview that aired Nov. 10, Trump said that he wants “the money to go into an account for people where the people buy their own health insurance.”
“The insurance will be better. It’ll cost less. Everybody’s going to be happy. They’re going to feel like entrepreneurs,” he told Fox News host Laura Ingraham. “They’re actually able to go out and negotiate their own insurance. And they can use it only for that reason. That’s the beauty, only for the purpose. And if we did that, that would be so exciting.”
He then added that it could be called “Trumpcare” or “whatever you want to call it.”
Trump also criticized the ACA, known as Obamacare, and said that any health care program that replaces it shouldn’t use the moniker.
“The premiums have gone up like rocket ships. And I’m not just talking about recently, I’m talking about for years they’ve been going up,” the president said, referring to the ACA, which was signed into law in 2010.
Trump signed the government funding bill at an event at the White House on Nov. 12, ending a record 43-day shutdown. The signing ceremony came just hours after the House passed the Senate measure on a mostly party-line vote of 222–209
