President Donald Trump trashed Obamacare as a means to make insurance companies rich during his remarks in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, on Friday night.
Trump’s comments come hours after he said he would be calling a meeting of health insurance companies to see if they can drop their prices and as House Republicans have sent legislation to the Senate to reduce health care costs.
“The current Unaffordable Care Act, commonly known as Barack Hussein Obamacare, was created to make insurance companies rich. It was bad health care at much too high a cost, and you see now that the steep increase in premiums — it’s being demanded by the Democrats,” he said.
“It was never any good, Obamacare. It was done for the benefit of insurance companies, which totally control the Democrats,” he added.
One of several concessions that Democrats sought in shutting the government down, in part, for 43 days beginning in October, was an extension of COVID-era Obamacare subsidies. The continuing resolution Trump signed on November 13 is set to expire at the end of January, and Trump noted that Democrats could shut down the government again in an effort to get an extension of the subsidies.
“That’s why you could have a strike on January 30. You could have another shutdown because the Democrats are totally in the hands of — they’re totally controlled by the insurance companies, big wealthy companies,” he said.
“Again, I want the money to go directly to the people so you can buy your own health care, and you’ll get much better health care at a much lower price, and the only losers will be the insurance companies that have gotten rich,” he added.
During an announcement earlier Friday of nine more deals with pharmaceutical companies to drastically lower prescription prices, marking the 6th to 14th such agreements he reached since late September, Trump said he plans to convene a meeting with insurance companies soon to push for lower prices for consumers.
“I’m going to call a meeting of the insurance companies. I’m going to see if they get their price down, to put it very bluntly,” he said.
Trump said a meeting could take place in Florida while he is in Mar-a-Lago, or it could be back in Washington, DC, the first week he returns to the White House, noting large insurance companies have received “far more money than they’re entitled to.”
