Health insurers, notably those with significant operations in Obamacare marketplace businesses, traded lower in the premarket on Monday after President Donald Trump said federal funding should be sent directly to people, bypassing “BIG, BAD” and “money sucking” insurance companies.
Centene (CNC) and Oscar Health (OSCR) were among the leading decliners, while Elevance Health (ELV) and Molina Healthcare (MOH) also traded lower alongside other major managed care organizations such as UnitedHealth Group (UNH), Humana (HUM), and CVS Health (CVS).
“The money must now go directly to the people, taking the ‘fat cat’ insurance companies out of the corrupt system of healthcare,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Saturday. “The people can buy their own, much better policy, for much less money, saving, for themselves, an absolute fortune!!!”
He followed up with another post on Sunday, noting, “Pay the people, not the insurance companies!”
Trump’s comments came before the U.S. Senate cleared a critical procedural hurdle on Sunday in an attempt to end the government shutdown, which has extended for more than a month, with expiring Obamacare subsidies being a major obstacle to reaching a compromise.
According to the Wall Street Journal, a GOP proposal that called for direct transfer of federal funds into flexible-spending accounts instead of insurance firms appeared to have broken the Senate impasse.
On Friday, Senate Democrats introduced a counterproposal with a one-year extension to expiring Obamacare subsidies as part of a package of funding measures to end the shutdown, which was promptly rejected by Republicans.
According to the new GOP proposal, some healthcare funding will be provided directly to households to offset deductibles and other out-of-pocket expenses, rather than to extend ACA subsidies for another year.