President Donald Trump said yesterday that he is opposed to a push to help Puerto Rico resolve its $70 billion debt load as the U.S. territory faces looming austerity measures amid a deep economic crisis, the New York Times reported yesterday. Trump issued a Twitter blast aimed at efforts to help the island cover its Medicaid costs — an issue that's entangled in Puerto Rico's last-minute debt negotiations. Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello traveled to Washington, D.C., to lobby legislators for relief from a decade-long economic crisis that is blamed partly on previous administrations in the territory that borrowed billions of dollars to cover budget deficits. Rossello repeated requests that Puerto Rico receive the same amount of Medicaid funding that U.S. states do. It currently receives lower Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements compared with U.S. states, forcing it to spend more than $1 billion a year in Medicaid alone above what it would face if it were a state. Nearly half of the island's 3.4 million inhabitants rely on Medicaid. Puerto Rico faces a May 1 deadline to either reach a deal with bondholders to restructure a portion of its debt or embrace a bankruptcy-like process. The local government has been negotiating with bondholders since last week.
For more news and analysis of Puerto Rico's debt crisis, be sure to visit ABI's "Puerto Rico in Distress" webpage.
