President Donald Trump criticized Obamacare as a means to enrich insurance companies during his remarks in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, on Friday night.
Trump’s comments come hours after he said he would call a meeting of health insurance companies to see if they can lower their prices and House Republicans sent legislation to the Senate to reduce health care costs.
“The current Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Barack Hussein Obamacare, was created to enrich insurance companies. It was bad health care at too high a cost, and now you see the sharp increase in premiums being demanded by Democrats,” he said.
“Obamacare never served any purpose. It was done for the benefit of the insurance companies, which the Democrats totally control,” he added.
One of several concessions Democrats sought by shutting down the government, in part, for 43 days starting in October, was an extension of COVID-era Obamacare subsidies. The continuing resolution that Trump signed on Nov. 13 is set to expire at the end of January, and Trump signaled that Democrats could shut down the government again in an effort to get an extension of the subsidies.
“That’s why there could be a strike on January 30. There could be another shutdown because the Democrats are totally in the hands of… they’re totally controlled by the insurance companies, the big rich companies,” he said.
“Once again, I want the money to go directly to the people so they can buy their own health care and get much better health care at a much lower price, and the only losers will be the insurance companies that have gotten richer,” he added.
During an announcement earlier Friday of nine more deals with pharmaceutical companies to slash prescription drug prices, marking the sixth to 14th such agreement he reached since late September, Trump said he plans to soon call a meeting with insurance companies 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 lower the price, to put it very clearly,” he said.
Trump said a meeting could take place in Florida while he is at Mar-a-Lago, or he could return to Washington, D.C., the first week of his return to the White House, noting that big insurance companies have received “far more money than they are entitled to.”
