President Trump Opposes Obamacare Deal

WASHINGTON, DC — Republican efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act have crashed and burned several times over. In the wake of this failure, U.S. Sens. Lamar Alexander and Patty Murray pushed an effort to stabilize the health insurance market — while President Trump seemed to waffle on his support for the proposal.

But at the White House press briefing Wednesday, spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump definitively does not support the new proposal in its current form.

One of the key features of the Obamacare deal under consideration is a continuation of cost-sharing reduction payments to insurers to lower out-of-pocket costs for patients. Last week, Trump announced that he would cut off these payments, calling them a "bailout."

Watch: That Bipartisan Health Care Deal Isn't Getting Much Bipartisan Support

Trump seemed to support new Alexander-Murray deal, though, when he said of the negotiations at a Tuesday press conference that it "is a short-term solution so that we don't have this very dangerous little period." (For more political stories, subscribe to the White House Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts. Find your local Patch here. If you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

But by Wednesday morning, he offered direct criticism of continuing the cost-sharing reductions on Twitter.

Later in the day at a meeting with senators, he offered more mixed messages on the Alexander-Murray proposal.

"Lamar Alexander is working on it very hard from our side. And if something can happen, that's fine," he said. Then he added: "But I won’t do anything to enrich the insurance companies because right now the insurance companies are being enriched."

It's not clear what could happen that would be "fine," as Trump said, that didn't include a continuation of the cost-sharing reductions.

Alexander, a Tennessee Republican, and Murray, a Washington Democrat, had been working on a bipartisan health care agreement since September, before efforts at a last-ditch Obamacare "repeal and replace" plan for the GOP picked up steam. That bill eventually failed to reach a floor vote.

The Congressional Budget Office believes that the federal government will bear the brunt of the cost of cutting the cost-sharing reductions. Without these payments, premiums will rise, and the government will be stuck subsidizing the increased cost. According to this analysis, the payments aren't a bailout to the insurance companies — they're a bailout for the government itself.

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Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images