Donald Trump attacks bipartisan healthcare deal he had praised the day before

Donald Trump has hit out at a deal to fund Obamacare subsidies - a day after he appeared to support the bipartisan move to help Americans afford health insurance.

Earlier this week, Republican Senator Lamar Alexander and Democratic Senator Patty Murray announced they reached an agreement to fund insurance subsidies for Obamacare that Mr Trump said he was planning to end.

The subsidies, often called cost-sharing reductions, are payments to insurance companies from the federal government to help offset the cost of deductibles and out-of-pocket health costs for lower-income people. The senators said the plan would be funded for two years in exchange for more state flexibility in Obamacare.

Mr Trump had initially voiced his support for the move, saying it was “short-term solution”. “It will get us over this intermediate hump,” he said during a news conference in the Rose Garden with the Greek prime minister.

But on Wednesday, Mr Trump raised fresh doubts as to whether or not the deal had his backing.

“I am supportive of Lamar as a person & also of the process, but I can never support bailing out ins co’s who have made a fortune w/ O’Care,” he wrote on Twitter.

Mr Lamar said the President had called the day before to offer encouragement but then appeared to back off. He said he suspected that Mr Trump wanted to avoid committing to something, especially in light of the Republicans’ flailing efforts to scrap Obamacare and pass replacement legislation.

“I think he wants to reserve his options,” Mr Alexander, of Tennessee, told a forum hosted by the Axios new site. He said Mr Trump had wanted “to be encouraging” and predicted his deal would pass by the end of the year.

But the Associated Press said Mr Trump’s shifting positions annoyed Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, who took to the Senate floor to accuse the President of backing down on this issue.

“This president keeps zigging and zagging so it’s impossible to govern,” he said. “Our only hope is that maybe tomorrow he’ll be for this again.”

Pressed by reporters at the White House, Mr Trump said he would “not do anything to enrich” insurance companies, underscoring his apparent opposition to the deal.

“We’re going to see the bipartisan, and Lamar Alexander’s working on it very hard from our side, and if something can happen that’s fine,” he said.

“But I won’t do anything to enrich the insurance companies. Right now the insurance companies are being enriched. They’ve been enriched by Obamacare like nothing anybody's ever seen before.”

Mr Alexander and Ms Murray had announced their deal after experts said that unless the money was quickly restored, premiums would soar and some carriers would abandon unprofitable insurance markets.

The payments, which cost around $7bn this year, lower expenses for more than 6m people.

Mr Trump’s position on the issue genuinely appeared to shift on Tuesday. In the morning, he had suggested the White House was involved in legislation for the bipartisan deal. In the evening, he said he liked the work the senators had put in to reach an agreement but also said he did not like the idea of a “bailout”.

While the agreement between Ms Murray and Mr Alexander represents a political breakthrough amid an environment of political toxicity on Capitol Hill, it would still require the support of other senators to move the legislation forward. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives would also have to approve any proposal.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was noncommittal on whether he would put the legislation, once the specifics are worked out, on the Senate floor for a vote.