“Until President Trump makes an announcement himself, any reporting about the Administration’s healthcare positions is mere speculation,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said.
Affordability has been at the front of mind of the White House, especially after the Democratic victories in elections earlier this month.
Rising health care costs and the looming expiration of the enhanced subsidies—which would send premium payments soaring— would be a potent weapon for Democrats to run on. Polling shows extending the enhanced subsidies is politically popular, and the White House likely realized the president needed to act.
"Health care is a topic of discussion that’s happening very frequently and robustly inside the West Wing right now,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday.
“The president is very much involved in these talks and he’s very focused on unveiling a health care proposal that will fix the system and will bring down costs for consumers. As for the details of those discussions, I’ll let the president speak for himself.”
But conservatives in Congress have been railing against the enhanced subsidies for months, and the Affordable Care Act has been politically toxic to the GOP for a decade and a half. Republicans say the law is failing, and they would rather end it and start fresh than do anything to prop it up.
Moderate House Republicans floated a plan late last week to extend the enhanced subsidies for two years and enact changes designed to cut down on the fraud and abuse Republicans have said is rampant. Trump’s idea, as originally leaked, would have been much similar to the moderate plan than to the ideas pitched in the Senate.
But that was apparently too much for Republicans to support.
