EDITORIAL: It’s Trumpcare now

Oct. 14--"The Democrats ObamaCare is imploding. Massive subsidy payments to their pet insurance companies has stopped. Dems should call me to fix!"

And with that early morning tweet yesterday President Trump now owns the chaos and uncertainty that will inevitably follow what happens to a health care system after his removal of $7 billion in subsidies -- so-called cost sharing reduction payments -- that have helped fund the health insurance policies of an estimated 7 million low income Americans.

There is, of course, a solid legal argument to be made for ending the subsidies which have never actually been appropriated by Congress. House leaders successfully brought that case in 2014 against the Obama administration, which played as fast and loose with executive orders and shifting funds as the current one does.

But ultimately this isn't going to be a case for the lawyers -- although Democratic attorneys general are likely to be the ones challenging this time. No, this is a policy that will be fought out at state houses around the country, including our own.

The pain will be very real. Which means the political fallout will also be very real.

In Massachusetts alone cost sharing reduction payments would have amounted to $146 million in 2018, according to the Health Care Connector. Loss of that money will mean an average increase in premiums of 26.1 percent and impact some 80,000 people who get their insurance through the Connector.

Loss of the subsidies also makes more difficult the Baker administration's planned effort to move MassHealth recipients into the Connector pool.

Massachusetts is not alone. In some states insurers will simply abandon that market.

There is much that needs to be fixed about the Affordable Care Act, and clearly President Trump is frustrated by the inability of his Republican majority in Congress to do that. But slashing and burning it to the ground in a fit of presidential petulance isn't the way to go here -- not on the policy and certainly not on the politics of it.

Congress could fix at least this piece of the ACA by actually appropriating what amounts to a fairly modest subsidy. But now that Trump owns this debacle why would Democrats bail him out?

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