Trump threatens to end insurance payments if no health-care bill – CNBC

With Republican efforts to dismantle Obamacare in disarray, hundreds of U.S. counties are at risk of losing access to private health coverage in 2018 as insurers consider pulling out of those markets.

In response, Trump on Friday again suggested his administration would let the Obamacare program "implode." He has weakened enforcement of the law's requirement for individuals to buy insurance, threatened to cut off funding and sought to change plan benefits through regulations.

Meanwhile, some congressional Republicans were still trying to find a way forward on health care.

Senator Lindsey Graham said in a statement issued late on Friday that he and two other Republican senators, Dean Heller and Bill Cassidy, had met with Trump after the defeat to discuss Graham's proposal to take tax money raised by Obamacare and send it back to the states in the form of health-care block grants.

Graham said the move would end Democrats' drive for a national single-payer health-care system by putting states in charge.

"President Trump was optimistic about the Graham-Cassidy-Heller proposal," Graham added. "I will continue to work with President Trump and his team to move the idea forward."

However, a majority of Americans are ready to move on from health care at this point. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Saturday, 64 percent of 1,136 people surveyed on Friday and Saturday said they wanted to keep Obamacare, either "entirely as is" or after fixing "problem areas."

When asked what they think Congress should do next, most picked other priorities such as tax reform, foreign relations and infrastructure. Only 29 percent said they wanted Republicans in Congress to "continue working on a new health-care bill."

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Trump threatens to end insurance payments if no health-care bill - CNBC

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