2 Senators Strike Deal on Health Subsidies That Trump Cut Off

Two leading senators, hoping to stabilize teetering health insurance markets under the Affordable Care Act, reached a bipartisan deal on Tuesday to fund critical subsidies to insurers that President Trump moved just days ago to cut off.

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At the White House, virtually as the deal was being announced, Mr. Trump voiced support for it while insisting that he would try again to repeal President Barack Obama’s signature health law.

The plan by the senators, Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, and Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, would fund the subsidies for two years, a step that would provide at least short-term certainty to insurers. The subsidies, known as cost-sharing reduction payments, reimburse insurance companies for lowering deductibles, co-payments and other out-of-pocket costs for low-income customers.

Without them, insurance companies said, premiums for many customers purchasing plans under the Affordable Care Act would shoot up, and with profits squeezed, some of the companies would probably leave the market.

“In my view, this agreement avoids chaos,” Mr. Alexander said, “and I don’t know a Democrat or a Republican who benefits from chaos.”

Mr. Trump appeared to back the deal, even as he berated insurance companies, declared the Affordable Care Act “virtually dead” and promised the demise of the health law in due time.

“It’ll get us over this intermediate hump,” the president said at a Rose Garden news conference, describing it as “a short-term solution so that we don’t have this very dangerous little period.”

Passage of the deal negotiated by Mr. Alexander and Ms. Murray is still far from assured. If approved, the agreement could provide a reprieve for the Affordable Care Act that would prevent 2018 premiums from increasing as much as they might otherwise have gone up. But consumers in many states will still face double-digit rate increases, and in many counties, health plans will be available from only one insurance company.

Moreover, Mr. Trump and other Republicans are still intent on repealing much of the Affordable Care Act, and an executive order issued last week by Mr. Trump could destabilize markets in 2019 and later years by encouraging sales of health plans that skirt the coverage requirements of the health care law.

“For a period of one year, two years, we will have a very good solution,” Mr. Trump said. “But we’re going to have a great solution, ultimately, for health care.”

The House is away for a weeklong recess, and a spokesman for Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin declined to comment.

A leading conservative in the House, Representative Mark Walker of North Carolina, the chairman of the Republican Study Committee, immediately declared the deal to be “unacceptable.”

“Obamacare is in a ‘death spiral,’ ” Mr. Walker said. “Anything propping it up is only saving what Republicans promised to dismantle.”

Another leading conservative, Representative Mark Meadows of North Carolina, the chairman of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus, described the agreement as a “good start,” but said “much more work needs to be done.”

“Most importantly,” he added, “it bears repeating: Republicans cannot allow short-term solutions to become a distraction to repealing and replacing Obamacare — something we’ve promised to do for seven years.”