WASHINGTON (AP) President Donald Trump’s cut-off of federal payments to insurers is jolting the health care and political worlds.
It’s threatening to boost premiums for millions and rattle insurance markets. It also could shove Republicans into a renewed civil war over their efforts to shred the Obama health care law.
Trump is halting subsidies to companies for lowering costs for low- and middle-income earners — reductions insurers are legally required to make.
Defiant Democrats, convinced they have important leverage, are promising to press for a bipartisan deal to restore the money by year’s end.
Nearly 20 states have filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump over his decision to stop payments that lower health insurance deductibles and co-pays for millions of Americans with modest incomes.
Attorneys general from California, Connecticut, Kentucky, Massachusetts and New York are among those announcing they had filed the lawsuit in federal court in California.
Trump said Thursday he would end the cost-sharing subsidies.
The attorneys general say Trump is not following federal law in ending a legally mandated system that already is operating.
Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen says Trump’s action would raise health insurance prices enough that healthier people will flee the insurance markets, resulting in higher costs for those who remain.
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