Trump: Millions Will Suffer Unless Dems Play Ball

The latest from our president:

Translation: I will continue to rip insurance coverage from the poor and sick until you cave in to my demands.

As it happens, stopping CSR payments to insurance companies might not do the damage Trump thinks it will. And his action yesterday, which encourages the creation of association plans that suck all the young and healthy customers out of Obamacare, might also be less damaging than he’d like. On a technical level, it turns out that Trump’s executive order doesn’t allow association plans to market to individuals, which reduces its scope. On a political level, it will take months for agencies to create rules and hold hearings to implement the EO, and possibly many more months in court.

That’s semi-heartening, but there’s a whole different problem looming: the more Trump screws around with Obamacare rules, the more likely it is that insurance companies quit the exchanges. Making a profit is hard enough already, and participating in Obamacare has always been a long-term play for insurers. If it becomes clear that Congress and the president are hellbent on making things worse, they’ll just give up. That could wreck Obamacare even if the legislation and the executive orders don’t technically cause a lot of short-term damage.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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