Thune Still Pretending GOP Has An Alternative To Obamacare

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After years of Trump telling us he’s going to have an alternative to the Affordable Care Act, Senate Majority Leader John Thune continues to pretend they want to do anything other than destroy it, and return to the mess we had before it was enacted.

Here’s Thune on CNBC this Thursday admitting affordability is a problem, and lying that Trump would be willing to sit down and negotiate anything in good faith with Democrats on health insurance:

KERNEN: The reason that so many of these premiums are going up with Obamacare isn’t just because of the expiration of the subsidies. And that’s part of the problem. The overall ACA needs to be looked at. at this point, it seems like the president is starting… Is he starting to put some pressure to get something done? And I won’t say fold, but to concede to the Democrats.

You know, that the way the system is right now, you do need to probably increase subsidies at some point because it’s just not working. I mean, health care costs… Obamacare premiums don’t pay for the kind of health care you’re getting right now. It has to be subsidized.

THUNE: And partly because Obamacare, at its core, is inflationary. It’s been driving up costs. I mean, the fundamental problem here is the underlying program, which again, needs to be reformed. And the president wants to do that.

The president would like to overhaul Obamacare and give people health insurance that is higher quality and more affordable. But you’ve got Obamacare now embedded for the last 15 years. The Democrats, again, enhanced these subsidies a few years ago, so there’s no income cap on it.

And so, yeah, frankly, I think that’s a… These are all conversations that are ripe to be had, and I think the president is more than open to sitting down and working on solutions that would improve quality, and affordability for people in this country when it comes to health care.

But part of the problem you have is the Obamacare program in the first place and everything that goes with it has an inflationary impact on health care costs. So health care costs have been going up. They’re going to go up irrespective of what happens on these enhanced subsidies. They were going up anyway. Uh frankly, I think that’s a problem that needs to be addressed, needs to be looked at. And we’re willing to do that. But you can’t do it while you’re holding the federal government hostage.