Following President Trump’s dead-of-night announcement that he’d end subsidies that help low-income Americans purchase health insurance, CNN’s Chris Cuomo hosted Rep. Jim Jordan, the Republican Chairman Emeritus of the Freedom Caucus, who strenuously defended the move. However, Cuomo was equally passionate while arguing that Trump is torpedoing Obamacare in an effort to prove that Obama’s signature policy is a disaster to America. Yet Jordan believes that Trump is simply ending payments to insurance companies that the Justice Department considers “unconstitutional.”
The above clip begins after Cuomo calls Trump an “emperor” for relying upon executive orders every time Congress doesn’t succeed at passing his agendas. Cuomo also argued that there’s no conceivable way that removing these subsidies would be beneficial for low-income Americans:
“You cannot find a reasonable health care analyst who will look at cutting the subsidies, shrinking the enrollment period, and doing other things that the president’s doing in his executive order and what you’re trying to do in your bill, that makes it better for American families””
Further, Cuomo accused Republicans of allowing Trump to intentionally destroy Obama care while “doing it on the backs of the most needy.” Jordan argued, “You can’t stabilize this thing, it’s already falling apart.” To which Cuomo countered, “You’re making it fall apart!”
Trump’s removal of subsidies is projected to substantially elevate insurance premiums and increase deductibles for families and individuals near the poverty line. And again, Trump is using his executive power to chip away at Obamacare — the subsidy removal is the 12th instance of this strategy — following the GOP Congress’ repeated attempts to “repeal and replace.”
(Via CNN)