President Trump is ready to propose a new healthcare policy when the government reopens to replace the “broken” Obamacare system Democrats created, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday.
Ms. Leavitt said that negotiating the Obamacare system is “untenable,” when asked by reporters whether the White House would invite Democrats to discuss with the president the Obamacare subsidies their party originally wanted to extend for another year to lower premiums. Democrats had been blocking bills to reopen the government unless the GOP agreed to extend the premiums.
“The Democrats were holding our country hostage to try to negotiate on a health care system that they created. Obamacare, as it’s famously called, is a system the Democrats created. It is a broken system,” she said.
“It has driven up health care costs dramatically in this country, and now they shut the government down to try to fix that system they broke. It doesn’t make any sense to us, which is why the President said that’s a completely untenable position,” she said.
With the government reopening, Ms. Leavitt said the president “is absolutely open to having conversations about health care, and I think you’ll see the president putting forth some really good policy proposals the Democrats should take very seriously to fix again the system that they broke.” She said Mr. Trump will discuss more about this soon.
Mr. Trump appeared on Fox News Channel’s The Ingraham Angle on Tuesday, giving an idea as to how he would envision a “Trumpcare” policy proposal.
“What I want…instead of going to the insurance companies, I want the money to go into an account for people, where the people buy their own health insurance,” Mr. Trump said. “It’s so good, the insurance will be better. It will cost less. Everybody is going to be happy. They’re going to feel like entrepreneurs. They’re actually going to be able to go out and negotiate their own health insurance, and they can use it only for that reason.”
He said, “And if we did that, that would be so exciting—call it ‘Trumpcare’.”
