Trump Is Weak And Now Everyone Knows He's Always Bluffing

In my prior post , I talked about how the GOP Congress is virtually ignoring all of Trump's demands regarding the potential government shutdown at the end of this week. They want to pass a "clean" continuing budget resolution and will probably do so with the knowledge that Trump will sign it no matter what. It also appears that health insurers also know that Trump is bluffing about withholding the cost-sharing subsidies from insurers as a ploy to get Democrats to deal on the ACA.

The majority of insurers in Virginia and Kentucky have made initial filings to participate in the ACA for 2018. Nine of the ten insurers in 2017 will be back in 2018 in Virginia as well as two of the three in Kentucky.  While these are only initial filings and the companies still have the chance to withdraw in the coming months, it does indicate that health insurers are not scared off by Trump's threats.

Because of the chaos that Trump's pledge to repeal Obamacare threatened to create, many states have already moved their filing deadline back a month and into June. But so far the initial indications are that health insurers do not believe that the Republicans will be able to come up with a plan to replace the ACA and certainly do not believe Trump's idle threats about withholding their cost-sharing subsidies. And, as Trump caves on threat after threat, he will become weaker and weaker and more and more irrelevant.