… Donald Trump spent much of his first year in office trying to make Americans’ health insurance more expensive. In interviews with major publications last spring, the president repeatedly threatened to deliberately destabilize the Affordable Care Act marketplaces by abruptly halting subsidies to insurers. By year’s end, he had made good on that threat. …
The public has always tended to blame the president’s party for anything bad that happens on his watch. Trump has has tried mightily (if clumsily) to make Obamacare an exception to this rule — repeating, over and over, that Democrats would “own” any future problems the law encountered. The president has even gone so far as to claim that Barack Obama purposely designed the ACA marketplaces to self-destruct shortly after he left office.
Voters aren’t buying it. Polling from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) has consistently found that most Americans believe Trump and his party are responsible for any future problems with Obamacare. CONT.
Eric Levitz, New York Magazine