Even if lawmakers do not vote to repeal and replace Obamacare, American taxpayers should not have to continue to bail out the insurance industry, Marc Short, President Donald Trump's director of legislative affairs, told Fox News Monday.
"Lots of people have been crushed by Obamacare, [but] the insurance industry has blossomed," Short said during a "Fox & Friends" interview.
"They have done extremely well with it."
The health insurance industry spent more than $100 million lobbying Congress for Obamacare, which forced all, by individual and employer mandate, to buy insurance, said Short.
"In this process, there is also something called cost-sharing reductions, payments that were never appropriated," he continued, noting the Obama administration started to pay them at a cost of $135 billion to be dispersed over the next 10 years.
"This is not a legal payment," said Short. "We can finally repeal and replace Obamacare. If that's not going to happen, why should the American taxpayers continue to bail out insurance industry?"
Short's comments follow a tweet Saturday by Trump, in which he threatened to end government payments to health insurers or to members of Congress to subsidize their insurance payments.
"When Obamacare passed, Sen. [Chuck] Grassley put in an amendment that said if we are going to force this on the American people, then Congress should live under the same law of the land," said Short.
"In 2013, when Obamacare was being implemented, OPM [the Office of Personnel Management] and the Obama administration put out a special ruling that said that members of Congress and staffs don't have to live by this law, that we will give them special subsidy to pay for their healthcare."
Taking away the payment is an executive branch decision, continued Short, so it will not be one that needs congressional authority.
"Perhaps Congress would look to overturn executive action in that realm," said Short. "What helped propel Donald Trump into the presidency is America's outrage about Congress living under a different set of rules."
Meanwhile, as Obamacare repeal and replace measures have stalled, the White House is moving toward tax reform, but Short said the administration doesn't want to be in an "either or" situation, but at the same time, the middle class needs tax relief.
"Too many companies have left America because the corporate tax rates are too high here," said Short. "We want to keep jobs. We need to lower that rate so we can make sure jobs are protected in America."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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