The GOP Is Suddenly Playing Defense on Health Care

In one of many tweets last week, President Donald Trump declared: “All Republicans support people with pre-existing conditions, and if they don’t, they will after I speak to them. I am in total support.” His statement probably puzzled Americans who remember what happened in May 2017, when Trump and House Republicans met in the Rose Garden to celebrate their votes to repeal Obamacare—which guarantees health coverage to people with preexisting conditions.

Trump’s tweet seems out of sync, too, with what happened earlier this week when his Department of Health and Human Services released new rules that will likely make it tougher for people with serious medical conditions to buy affordable coverage.

[Read: The shadow government working to save Obamacare from collapse]

Obamacare is still the granted by HHS. Healthy people would likely buy those plans and leave Obamacare with a smaller, sicker pool of patients. A smaller pool means higher premiums. As Sabrina Corlette, a health-research professor at Georgetown University, , the department’s move means that “comprehensive coverage will be more expensive for those who need it most.”