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A bipartisan Senate deal to curb the growth of health insurance premiums is reeling after President Donald Trump reversed course and opposed the agreement and top congressional Republicans and conservatives gave it a frosty reception. ... In remarks Tuesday in the Rose Garden, Trump called the deal "a very good solution" that would calm insurance markets, giving him time to pursue his goal of scrapping Obama's 2010 Affordable Care Act, the target of Republican derision since it was signed into law. Although top Democrats and some Republicans praised the Alexander-Murray compromise agreement, Trump backed off after a day of criticism from many in the GOP. (Fram and Werner, 10/18)

Trump acknowledged Tuesday that he had encouraged Alexander to reach a deal with Murray, but said he wanted to ultimately see states given blocks of money and be allowed to set up their own programs. “The solution will be for about a year or two years; it’ll get us over this intermediate hump,” Trump told reporters. (Litvan, Edney and Wasson, 10/18)

The measure presented congressional Republicans with an uncomfortable choice between helping sustain coverage for many Americans and making good on a long-standing campaign promise — and paying the consequences — by allowing the ACA to falter. Senate Republican leaders did not immediately endorse the proposal. Influential House Republicans panned the blueprint, and Trump offered conflicting reviews. The discord swiftly cast the plan’s viability into serious doubt. (Sullivan, Eilperin and Goldstein, 10/17)

[G]etting the deal though would require a sustained, focused lobbying effort on Capitol Hill, where Republicans are facing a biting political calculus. They’re still stinging from spending all of this year in a draining but fruitless effort to repeal and replace Obamacare — the law that congressional Republicans have been trying to uproot for seven years. Now, they would have to decide whether the state flexibility concessions Alexander got are enough. (Haberkorn and Cancryn, 10/17)

Murray said she and Alexander had had discussions with more than half the Senate about the bill and she believed the plan would get broad support. Alexander said they'll work to get co-sponsors for the legislation throughout the week so they can bring a bill to McConnell for consideration. McConnell has not said whether he supports the effort. (Kodjak, 10/17)

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other Democrats expressed support for the Alexander-Murray agreement, though Democrats have concerns about whether Republicans may try to add provisions to further relax the ACA's consumer protections. There are widespread concerns that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other congressional GOP leaders are in no hurry to find a legislative vehicle for passing the market stabilization agreement because they are unenthusiastic about it. In addition, many Republicans want to focus on passing tax cuts and fear getting bogged down in another healthcare debate. (Meyer, 10/17)

A bipartisan Senate deal that would extend critical ObamaCare payments to insurers for two years got the cold shoulder from Republicans on Tuesday, suggesting it faces a rocky path to become law. The chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee in the House dismissed the offering from Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) as an affront to GOP promises to repeal President Obama’s signature legislation. (Sullivan, 10/17)

Two holdouts on the GOP effort to repeal ObamaCare are throwing their support behind a bipartisan deal to extend payments to insurers after President Trump moved to nix them. Republican Sens. John McCain (Ariz.) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) on Tuesday both praised the agreement to provide two years of the cost-sharing reduction payments. (Carney, 10/17)

The bill needs 60 votes to pass in the Senate, where Republicans hold 52 seats. The deal is most likely to get a vote in both chambers if it is tethered to another issue. In the Senate, one possibility is that it could be combined with a disaster-relief bill passed by the House last week, lawmakers and aides said. (Armour and Peterson, 10/17)

The chairman of the powerful House Freedom Caucus said more work needs to be done to get conservatives to support a bipartisan Senate deal to extend critical ObamaCare payments to insurers, but he called it a starting point. “There are elements in the Alexander-Murray plan that we can build on, but much more work needs to be done,” Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C) in a statement, but he called it a "good start." (Weixel, 10/17)

A senior fellow for the Heritage Foundation, an influential conservative think tank, ripped a bipartisan deal on Tuesday that would provide funding for key health-care subsidies that President Trump recently announced he would cut off. In a statement issued hours after Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.), leaders of the Senate Health Committee, announced that they had agreed on a plan to stabilize insurance markets under the Affordable Care Act, Ed Haislmaier, a senior research fellow in health-care policy for the Heritage Foundation, said the proposal would offer little stability for the unsubsidized insurance market. (Greenwood, 10/17)

President Trump on Tuesday blamed Democrats for any premium spikes for ObamaCare plans, even as key senators announced a bipartisan deal aimed at saving the insurance markets from actions taken by the administration. “Any increase in ObamaCare premiums is the fault of the Democrats for giving us a ‘product’ that never had a chance of working,” Trump wrote on Twitter. (Weixel, 10/17)