What did Donald Trump do today?

He said massive increases in health insurance costs weren't "so bad" and lashed out at a reporter for asking about them.

This week, acting on orders from Trump, the Republican-controlled Senate killed the last chance it had to restore the subsidies that fund the Affordable Care Act. Trump was asked about it today.

REPORTER: At the end of this year, those extended Obamacare subsidies expire. What's your message to those 24 million Americans who will see their premiums go up? 

TRUMP: Don't make it sound so bad because, you know, obviously you're, uh, a sycophant for Democrats, you're obviously a, a provider of bad news for Republicans.

The bad news for Republicans and everyone else is that tens of millions of Americans will, in fact, see skyrocketing insurance premiums in the coming year because of Trump's refusal to fund health care. 

In fact, the bad news got worse this week, as the Senate now seems unlikely to pass a related series of tax credits that had reduced costs for enrollees. That means that the average cost of health insurance will, on average, more than double for those tens of millions of Americans. 

In a particularly cruel twist to voters who may have believed Trump's pledge to bring down costs, the worst increases are likely to hit providers in rural areas, which tend to vote Republican. In other words, Trump's attack on the ACA will be hitting his own voting base the hardest.

Trump is the heir to a fortune worth hundreds of millions of dollars and has never relied on insurance of any kind even before his health became the taxpayers' burden: people with that much wealth usually just pay for everything out of pocket. That may explain why he seems confused about the basic concept of insurance in the first place, and why he thinks giving Americans a small amount of cash and leaving them to "negotiate" individually with providers and insurance companies would suffice. 

Or, as one pundit put it: "80 years as a human and 10 years in politics and he has no idea how health insurance works."

Why does this matter?

• Reporters asking questions about bad things isn't what caused the bad things to happen. 

• 24 million Americans seeing their health insurance costs double "sounds so bad" because it is so bad.