Welcome to the politics, guys. I'm Michael Baranowski, a political scientist at Northern Kentucky University.

With I'm Michael Baranowski, a political scientist at Northern Kentucky University. With me today for our weekly news analysis show is my co-host, attorney and Republican strategist, Jay Carson.

We start this week with some important developments in health care policy.

Late last week, President Trump announced that his administration would be cutting off

cost-sharing subsidies to insurers, which reimbursed them for lowering deductibles and co-pays

for people from 100 to 250% of the poverty level who are enrolled in the Obamacare markets.

Now, the subsidies are required by the Affordable Care Act, but the money for them was never

actually appropriated, which led to still pending lawsuits by congressional Republicans.

Now, in the interim, the Obama administration, and until now, the Trump administration,

have kept making these payments out of concern for the disruption to the exchanges if those payments

stopped. And for a while earlier this week, it looked like there might be a legislative fix to this

when Senate Health Committee chair, Lamar Alexander, and ranking Democratic member Patty Murray

said they'd come to an agreement on a plan to fund the subsidies for two years, as well as to

give states more flexibility by making it easier for them to get waivers to certain Obamacare

provisions. And the measure they'd come up with would also restore millions of dollars in funding

for exchange sign-up efforts, which the Trump administration recently cut. And this proposed legislation has a lot

of support, really, doctors, hospitals, insurers, and including groups like the National Governors

Association and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. And initially, it seemed like President Trump was

one of the supporters. But later in the week, he backed away from it, characterizing the plan as a bailout

for insurers. So that's kind of where we are now on this. So, Jay, I guess I'm wondering a couple

things. Will this become law, do you think in some format? And maybe even more importantly,

should it? Well, gosh, I, you know, I think the conservative position, and first, my first, you know,

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