President Donald Trump met with health care executives at the White House Monday and touted the importance of repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act.
"Obamacare has been a disaster and it's only getting worse," Trump said. "Last year alone Obamacare premiums increased by double digits. Since it has gone into effect premiums are up by almost 100 percent in many areas."
Trump said that 2017 would be a "catastrophic" year for Obamacare, citing how nearly half of insurers have stopped participating in the exchanges and that one-third of counties in the United States will only have one insurer participating on the exchanges.
"The chaos that Obamacare has created and for which congressional Democrats—and you see that—are alone responsible for requires swift action," Trump said. "I actually told the Republicans that if we did nothing, just did nothing for a two-year period, let Obamacare totally implode, which it's doing right now anyway, that would be from a political standpoint the best thing we could do."
Trump said that once his administration and Republicans in Congress start taking over health care with a repeal-and-replace solution, they will inherit the problem.
"It becomes ours," said the president. "But it's the right thing to do for the American people. I think allowing this to go on, this disaster to go on, is a mistake." He went on, "The new plan will be a great plan for the patients, for the people, and hopefully for the companies. It's going to be a very competitive plan."
"Costs will come down," he said. "Health care will go up very, very substantially. I think people are going to like it a lot."
Trump met with health care executives from UnitedHealth, Aetna, Cigna, Humana, Anthem, and BlueCross BlueShield, many of which announced last year that they were exiting some or all of the Obamacare exchanges.