Obamacare, President Donald Trump declared, “is finished,” “dead” and “gone.” | Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images Trump predicts 'long-term fix' for Obamacare by March or April

President Donald Trump insisted Monday that Democrats will be blamed for their “Obamacare mess,” despite executive actions he took last week to undercut the law, while also expressing confidence that there will be a "long-term fix" for the law by March or April.

Trump moved last week to cut off cost-sharing reduction (CSR) subsidy payments to insurers. The scrapped subsidies, which were worth $7 billion this year and were paid out in monthly installments, will likely jolt the already-fragile Obamacare insurance markets, but Trump denied any responsibility for what may happen to Obamacare or the millions of people impacted by his decision.


He did, however, take credit for bringing Republicans and Democrats to the negotiating table, if only for a short-term fix.

“In my opinion, what’s happening is as we meet, Republicans are meeting with Democrats because of what I did with the CSRs, because I cut off the gravy train,” Trump told reporters during a Cabinet meeting at the White House. “If I didn’t cut the CSRs, they wouldn’t be meeting. They’d be having lunch and enjoying themselves, all right? They’re right now having emergency meetings to get a short-term fix of health care, where premiums don’t have to double and triple every year like they’ve been doing under Obamacare.”

Obamacare, the president declared, “is finished,” “dead” and “gone.” “You shouldn’t even mention” it, he said, arguing that “there is no such thing as Obamacare” anymore and adding that it was a policy that never could have worked.

Trump predicted a short-term bipartisan fix for Obamacare will come “fairly soon,” and he claimed Republicans have the votes to pass the health care reform that has eluded them for the past nine months.

“Soon as we have the next reconciliation, I think we’ll get the vote for health care. I feel very confident of that,” Trump said. “I think we already have the vote for health care. Sadly, the Democrats can’t join us on that, which will be the long-term fix, but I do believe we’ll have a short-term fix because I think the Democrats will be blamed for the mess. This is an Obamacare mess.”

“When the premiums go up, that has nothing to do with anything other than the fact that we had poor health care, delivered poorly, written poorly, approved by the Democrats,” the president continued. “It was called Obamacare. But I think we’ll have a short-term fix, and then we’ll have a long-term fix, and that will take place probably in March or April. We will have a very solid vote. It’ll be probably 100 percent Republican, no Democrats, but most people know that’s gonna be a very good form of health insurance.”

