Donald Trump is doing everything he can to damage Obamacare, making insurance more expensive by cutting off cost-sharing reduction payments and destabilizing the healthcare marketplaces. This is the opposite of what the American people want Trump to be doing, the latest Kaiser health tracking poll shows:
The majority of the public think it is more important for President Trump and Congress to work on legislation to stabilize the marketplaces in order to minimize premiums increases and encourage more insurers to participate in the marketplaces than continue efforts to repeal and replace the 2010 health care law (66 percent vs. 29 percent).
A bare 51 percent majority of Republicans favor continuing to try to repeal and replace, but that in itself is an indictment—congressional Republicans and Trump have spent most of 2017 trying to do something that is supposedly the top priority of their base, and it’s only supported by 51 percent of their party’s voters. Meanwhile, 67 percent of independents want Trump and Congress to be trying to stabilize the marketplaces. Which is, again, exactly the opposite of what Trump is doing.
When it comes to the CSRs—the payments Trump just announced he’s cutting off—“a majority of the public (60 percent) support Congress guaranteeing the funds to continue these payments.”
Trump can try to pretend he’s doing something other than sabotage and hostage-taking here, but people know better already, even before the damage he’s inflicting on the healthcare system hits them personally.