Not even a full day after Senators reached a "bipartisan" deal to keep subsidies to health insurers for the next two years, this latest attempt to keep Obamacare alive appears to be dying, because moments after Fox News reported that the Alexander-Murray Bill "will be dead in the House" as many in the GOP "want full repeal and replace", Bloomberg reported that the bipartisan deal has "stalled out" according to Senator Thune, while Senator Hatch said that he opposes the Alexander-Murray fix altogether.
- ALEXANDER/MURRAY HEALTHCARE BILL WILL BE DEAD ON ARRIVAL IN THE HOUSE. HOUSE GOP INSISTS ON REPEAL/REPLACE - SOURCES: FOX NEWS
- ALEXANDER-MURRAY PLAN `HAS STALLED OUT,' GOP SEN. THUNE SAYS
- SEN. ORRIN HATCH SAYS HE OPPOSES ALEXANDER-MURRAY OBAMACARE FIX
Meanwhile, after keeping pundits in the dark on whether Trump does or does not support the proposed deal, the President on Wednesday officially backed away from the proposed deal one day after signaling his support for the plan.
On Tuesday, Trump had indicated support of the agreement during a news conference, saying the White House had been involved in the negotiations and that the agreement would be a “short-term solution” that would “get us over this intermediate hump.” During Tuesday’s news conference, he also made clear that he wanted broader legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare and that he still considered the subsidies a government handout that had enriched insurance companies.
However, Trump's support fizzled on Wednesday, when he wrote on Twitter that “I am supportive of Lamar as a person & also of the process, but I can never support bailing out ins co’s who have made a fortune w/ O‘Care."
According to Reuters, Republican Senator Lamar Alexander, who reached the agreement with Democratic Senator Patty Murray, said Trump had “completely engineered” the proposal.
In another setback, Republican House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan indicated no interest in the Alexander-Murray agreement. “The speaker does not see anything that changes his view that the Senate should keep its focus on repeal and replace of Obamacare,” Ryan spokesman Doug Andres said.
While the proposal drew broad Democratic support, it remained unclear whether the agreement will even come to a vote in the Senate and House, both controlled by Trump’s fellow Republicans. Republicans have a 52-48 Senate majority but other than Alexander, and the never Trumpers, Susan Collins and John McCain, no other Republican senators have publicly embraced the plan.
Meanwhile, as always happens, after healthcare stocks surged yesterday on the news of the "deal", they are blissfully ignoring today's inevitable unwind of this arrangement, happy to keep all the gains, for now.