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Donald J. Trump, desperate for a winning political issue in the final two weeks of the presidential race, fiercely attacked Hillary Clinton on Tuesday over sharp premium increases that will hit some Americans covered under the Affordable Care Act. “The rates are going through the sky,” Mr. Trump said at a rally in Sanford, Fla., referring to double-digit increases in battleground states like North Carolina and Iowa. (Healy and Goodnough, 10/25)

Suddenly armed with fresh political ammunition, Donald Trump and anxious Republicans across the nation seized on spiking health care costs Tuesday in a final-days effort to spark election momentum. The Republican presidential nominee, trekking across must-win Florida, insisted "Obamacare is just blowing up" after the government projected sharp cost increases for President Barack Obama's signature health care law. Democrat Hillary Clinton, fighting to block Trump in the same battleground state, has vowed to preserve insurance for the millions of Americans covered under the law, but her team described the cost surge as a "big concern." (10/25)

At three events across Florida, Trump claimed that the Affordable Care Act was “blowing up” and vowed he would introduce legislation on his first day in office to replace it. “Repealing Obamacare and stopping Hillary’s health-care takeover is one of the single most important reasons that we must win on Nov. 8,” Trump declared at a rally here. He decried the “politicians who rammed this monster down our throats and said: “Hillary Clinton wants to keep it. She wants to spend a fortune on it. ... She wants to double-down on Obamacare and make it even more expensive and worse.” (Sullivan, Gold and Wagner, 10/25)

"All of my employees are having a tremendous problem with Obamacare," Trump told reporters during an appearance at the National Doral Golf Club in Miami. "What they're going through with their health care is horrible because of Obamacare." (Horsley, 10/25)

Donald Trump on Tuesday sought to take advantage of the Obama administration’s confirmation of Obamacare premium rates growing 25 percent on average next year, tying the increases to his experience as a businessman. “My employees are having a tremendous problem with Obamacare,” Trump told reporters at an event with at the Trump National Doral Miami, a hotel he owns in Florida. “What they’re going through with health care is horrible because of Obamacare,” he added, per Bloomberg News. Questions immediately arose about Trump’s comments, as The Trump Organization provides benefits to its full-time employees, like most large U.S. employers. Trump later told Fox News his employees don’t want Obamacare and are happy with the coverage they are provided through The Trump Organization. (McIntire, 10/25)

David Feder, Trump Doral’s general manager, said after Mr. Trump’s event that the resort provides health insurance coverage to nearly all of the resort’s 1,200 employees. “There really isn’t a need for the vast majority of our employees to purchase Obamacare,” Mr. Feder said. Mr. Feder said he was not certain what Mr. Trump meant when he said the Affordable Care Act was causing problems for Trump employees. “I wouldn’t say he’s incorrect,” Mr. Feder said. “I would tell you that the only employees I know who may purchase Obamacare are typically part-timers. Again, they’re not full-time employees, so they wouldn’t be eligible for the benefits, and typically in corporate America that’s the way it is.” (Epstein, 10/25)

In February, Trump told Fox News' Sean Hannity that his employees “don't have to worry about Obamacare.” Why? “I treat them really good with health care,” he said. “It's a very important thing.” This makes more sense than saying that all of his employees are having “tremendous problems.” Obamacare is not an insurance program; it is a federal policy that encourages universal health-care coverage by providing a system (the federal or state exchanges) for individuals to get insurance if they are unemployed or their employers don't provide coverage — and by taxing individuals who forgo coverage. To ensure affordability, the government subsidizes those who enroll under one of the exchanges, assuming they're at a certain income level. If Trump's employees were having these tremendous problems with Obamacare, it would mean that they were not receiving coverage through Trump, which he'd said they do. (Bump, 10/25)

Donald Trump on Tuesday claimed that the Obama administration is lying about the size of ObamaCare premium hikes, saying it put out a "phony" number.  The administration on Monday announced that the average premium increase for a benchmark ObamaCare plan will be 25 percent for 2017, a number Republicans quickly seized on to criticize the healthcare program.  But Trump took the line of attack a step further.  “And the number of 25 percent is nothing,” the GOP presidential nominee told Fox News. “That’s a phony number, too, that’s a lie, just like everything else.”  The 25 percent figure is from a 40-page report released by the Department of Health and Human Services on Monday. (Sullivan, 10/25)

Donald Trump took dead aim at Obamacare Tuesday, hoping to use news about skyrocketing premiums as a sword to cut into Hillary Clinton’s sizable lead in the presidential race and put his Democratic rival on the defensive. “This election is going to be about Obamacare. It’s going to be about jobs,” Trump said at a Tuesday morning event in Miami. “Obamacare is just blowing up.” By evening, the embattled Republican nominee had sharpened his attacks on the healthcare program. “It’s killing our businesses. It’s killing our small businesses. And it’s killing individuals,” he said in Tallahassee, his fifth event of the day in the crucial swing state. (Jacobs, 10/25)

Sharp premium increases for coverage under the Affordable Care Act are giving Republican candidates from the top of the ticket down a shared cudgel in the home stretch of the campaign. In recent weeks, many state regulators have been publishing steep increases from market leaders for insurance sold through HealthCare.gov, which offers plans for people in three dozen states who don’t have coverage through an employer or government program such as Medicare. (Radnofsky and Epstein, 10/25)

It was ostensibly the news that Senate and House Republicans had been waiting for: Two weeks before Election Day, we get word that the average premium for Obamacare health plans sold through HealthCare.gov — the one Republicans have been railing against for six years now — is going to spike by roughly 25 percent, as much as triple 2016 rates. And congressional Republicans were ready. The day the premiums for the Affordable Care Act were announced, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was out with an ad lambasting his opponent for supporting the law. (Phillips, 10/25)

One of the most endangered Senate Republicans released a new ad Tuesday hitting her opponent for supporting the “health care law” hurting families in New Hampshire. The ad, from Sen. Kelly Ayotte, was released Tuesday after the Obama administration confirmed double-digit insurance premium hikes in some states for next year. Republicans are jumping on the news as fodder for their argument that Obamacare isn’t working, but the Ayotte ad doesn’t reference Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act. (McIntire, 10/25)

Republicans trying to defend their House and Senate majorities – and not talk about Donald Trump’s controversies – pounced on Monday’s news of a big rate hike for Americans who purchase health care plans on government-run exchanges. As they see it, a blow to Obamacare should be a blow to all Democrats – a message that Republican campaigns pushed on Tuesday in newly released campaign ads and statements. The issue could impact with the electorate, Republican strategists say. But the impact is less than it could be because the party’s nominee is not helping to drive the message. (Yokley, 10/25)

Spiking premiums aren’t exactly an October surprise, and their impact this election cycle is hardly a foregone conclusion. News about larger premium increases for 2017 has been dribbling out for months, ahead of the start of the law’s fourth enrollment season, which begins Nov. 1. And most Americans will be unaffected by the big rate increases: Less than 10 percent of Americans purchase coverage through the individual market, and millions of people receive Obamacare subsidies to lower their monthly premiums. (Demko and Pradhan, 10/25)

Hillary Clinton on Tuesday conceded that many Americans are seeing their premiums go up under Obamacare. But the Democratic nominee cautioned against scrapping the Affordable Care Act, and said health care costs would "skyrocket" under a President Trump. (Griffiths, 10/25)

Hillary Clinton responded to news of ObamaCare premium hikes on Tuesday by saying she is going to “tackle” the problem of high costs, while defending the health law overall. “We’re going to really tackle that, we’re going to get co-pays and premiums and deductibles down, we’re going to tackle prescription drug costs,” Clinton told the radio station Hot 105. Republicans have jumped on the Obama administration’s announcement on Monday that premiums for the benchmark ObamaCare plan will increase by an average of 25 percent for 2017. (Sullivan, 10/25)

Among the issues sharply dividing Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in this year’s presidential election is the Affordable Care Act, considered by many to be President Barack Obama’s signature achievement. ... Without question, more than six years after becoming law, the Affordable Care Act remains troubled. On the plus side, some 20 million more Americans have health insurance today because of the law, and the nation’s uninsured rate is at a historic low. (Boulton, 10/25)