U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as he speaks during an event to announce a deal with Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk to reduce the prices of GLP-1 weight‑loss drugs, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., November 6, 2025.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
President Donald Trump proposed a compromise on health insurance payments, calling on Republicans to send federal payments that would go to insurers under the Affordable Care Act directly to Americans to bring an end to the government shutdown.
“I am recommending to Senate Republicans that the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars currently being sent to money sucking Insurance Companies in order to save the bad Healthcare provided by ObamaCare, BE SENT DIRECTLY TO THE PEOPLE SO THAT THEY CAN PURCHASE THEIR OWN, MUCH BETTER, HEALTHCARE, and have money left over,” he wrote in a Truth Social post on Saturday, without providing any details.
The post comes one day after Senate Republicans rejected Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s deal that would have allowed the U.S. government to reopen after a shutdown that began Oct. 1. The shutdown is now the longest in U.S. history.
The plan Democrats put forward on Friday proposed protecting federal ACA subsidies for at least one year, in exchange for dropping their demand that a longer-term extension of Obamacare tax credits be included in a stopgap government funding bill.
Those subsidies, which more than 20 million Americans use, will expire at the end of December if Congress does not extend them.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., on Friday called the Democrats’ proposal a “non-starter.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment or specifics on how Trump’s proposed direct payment plan would work.
Representatives for Sens. Schumer and Thune did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The D.C. offices for House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Congressional lawmakers have been in a stalemate, unable to find a compromise to end the shutdown. Democrats want a funding bill to include health-care subsidies that are due to expire for 24 million Americans at year’s end. Republicans, meanwhile, say Congress must first pass a funding bill without strings attached and allow the government to reopen before tackling other issues.
In the same post, Trump reiterated his call for terminating the filibuster, the Senate rule requiring 60 of its 100 members to pass most legislation. The GOP holds 53 seats in the Senate. There are 45 Democratic senators, and two independents who caucus with them.
Senate Republicans have pushed back on changing the rule, saying they would not support a change this week as Trump called for his party to exercise what he called “the Nuclear Option” on the rule.