Trump threatens to halt ObamaCare payments to force repeal

Congressional Republican leaders are ready to move on to new agenda items, but President Trump took to Twitter midday Saturday to share his newest idea for passing a health-care bill to repeal and replace ObamaCare:

The insurance "bailouts" he has in mind are Cost Sharing Reduction (CSR) payments, federal subsidies paid to make insurance plans affordable for low-income Americans. Trump has suggested nixing CSRs in the past, which he could do because the payments are made by the executive branch, not congressional appropriation, and which critics say would upend the entire ObamaCare system by causing premiums to skyrocket.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.