Losing Your Healthcare? GOP Rep Says Just Believe In Trump

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Rep. Byron Donalds’ solution for Americans losing their healthcare because of GOP policies and their craven decision to allow the ACA subsidies to expire is simply to believe in Trump.

Leaving one’s healthcare on the faith that Trump will do something is incoherent, dangerous and frankly unfathomable.

Rep Donalds and the entire Republican party is so devoid of ideas on how to fix healthcare in America, they are telling many of their own voters to stick their heads in the sand, pray to Trump and you’ll feel better because of a flimsy ceasefire? If they didn’t have any ideas before, they’re not going to have them now. They’ve never wanted Americans to have broad access to healthcare, instead believing everyone should become a slave to corporate gods offering healthcare. So much for small business.

COATES: Well, given what you’ve described, it sounds as though the trust is fundamentally broken down, such that negotiating or believing the other side would actually come to the table appropriately isn’t there.

And I do wonder, given statements from your colleagues like Marjorie Taylor Greene and others, that you seem to have a great deal of faith in your Republican colleagues to come to the table and come correct.

But coulda, shoulda, woulda for Democrats is not the plan. Is that the only recourse? Or Republicans have a plan to actually come to the table along with Democrats, assuming they do what you want and come back to the table?

What is the plan for people who are with the ACA who need to have the subsidies remain at the lower cost?

DONALDS: Laura, what I would tell you is, examine how Donald Trump has led the country since he came back to the White House.

Things that people said were impossible and would never happen have actually occurred under his leadership. We saw the biggest one just happen the other day with respect to peace in the Middle East and also all of the hostages alive and dead coming home.

So I would tell people who are thinking about the ACA, Democrats need to reopen the government.

When you do that, Donald Trump is a realist. He understands what’s happening in this country. He is leading all Americans.

He’s done a great job.

But we have to negotiate on even terms. You can’t use the government shutdown as a tool to extend subsidies.

Subsidies, by the way, the Democrats could have extended permanently when they were in charge and they chose not to to create this political environment.

It’s simply not right. I hear your point.

COATES: The president does deserve credit for what happened in Israel and Gaza and the return of the hostages.

But I was asking about Congress, the co-equal branch of government.

How is Donald Trump going to lower their premium so that they can afford healthcare once again? Is Trump going to pay for the millions of people’s skyrocketing premiums?

Memo to Byron Donalds: Republicans have used government shutdowns as bargaining leverage since the 90s, so please spare us your bullshit about not using the shutdown as leverage. The only bad faith actors here are Republicans, who intentionally set the subsidies to expire in order to kill the Affordable Care Act. If they gave a damn about costs, they’d pass a public option to force costs down.

Also, making the subsidies permanent in 2021 would have required 60 votes in the Senate unless Dems blew up the filibuster. They should have, but they didn’t. So the real issue here is the filibuster, which Republicans are free to blow up now so they can reopen the government without subsidies. Don’t ask Democrats for help with that.

Karoli Kuns contributed to this article

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