Trump Says He’s Spoken To Democrats About “Giving Large Amounts” Directly To People Instead Of Obamacare Subsidies
President Trump revealed that he has been speaking to Congressional Democrats about replacing expiring Obamacare subsidies with direct payments to Americans “I am talking to some Democrats right now about doing that,” Trump said Sunday night in Florida on his way back to the White House. “People love it. We’re going to take the money, well, if it gets approved, we’re going to take the money, we’re going to pay it back to the people of our country to go out and buy health insurance,” Trump said. “The insurance companies are making a fortune. Their stock is up over 1,000% over a short period of time. They are taking in hundreds of billions of dollars, and they’re not really putting it back, certainly not like they should.”
REPORTER: On affordability of healthcare — are you negotiating with lawmakers on healthcare ahead of a vote? PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I am. We’re negotiating with lawmakers, and I’ve had personal talks with some Democrats. — I can’t tell you who they are. I just don’t want to do that. It’s not fair to them — about paying large amounts of dollars back to the people. You know, this was my idea. It came up during that [shutdown]. You know, oftentimes under times of stress like the shutdown, you come up with great ideas that you wouldn’t have thought of before. The insurance companies are making a fortune. Their stock is up over 1,000% over a short period of time. They are taking in hundreds of billions of dollars, and they’re not really putting it back, certainly not like they should. So when I see this, and when I’ve seen this over the last pretty short period of time, I said, “Why don’t we just pay this money directly to the people of our country and let them buy their own health insurance?” And you know I made that statement, and I made it a little bit cavalierly, but it sounded good, and everybody has picked up, including Democrats, and we, I am talking to some Democrats right now about doing that. People love it. We’re going to take the money, well, if it gets approved, we’re going to take the money, we’re going to pay it back to the people of our country to go out and buy health insurance. Now they could put it in a health account. We could do it a lot of different ways, but they’d buy their own health insurance. They can negotiate price. And it’s, it’s gonna be locked so they can’t go out and buy a Cadillac. They can go out and buy health insurance.
