TIME RIGHT TO FIX OBAMACARE
For once, we have to agree with President
Granted, we have something a bit different in mind about what the legislative branch should do next. While Trump is fixated on pushing the repeal-and-replace rock up the hill again and again, we are encouraged by an emerging effort in
On Sunday,
Perhaps the most important item is a guarantee the fgovernment will continue making cost-sharing subsidy payments to insurers. That’s a mechanism of the ACA designed to compensate insurance companies for costs associated with the law’s requirement that low-income consumers be spared excessive out-of-pocket expenses for co-pays, deductibles and co-insurance. It’s worth about
Another big one is the creation of a nation-wide system of reinsurance, a mechanism that helps deal with a phenomenon called “adverse selection.” Because the Affordable Care Act prevents insurance companies from denying people coverage because of pre-existing conditions or from charging them more when they become sick, the insurance pool in most places has skewed toward those with high medical expenses. Reinsurance programs provide subsidies to insurers to help cover some of those expensive patients, thereby reducing the pressure to increase premiums on everyone else.
The three other elements of the plan scratch some Republican itches without gutting the ACA as a whole. One would repeal a tax on medical devices, which generates relatively little revenue (about
Another would require businesses to provide coverage only if they have more than 500 workers, up from the current 50. This, too, would have relatively little impact, since the vast majority of businesses with 50 employees provided employee health plans before Obamacare anyway. Finally, the proposal includes mechanisms to facilitate the sale of health insurance across state lines.
On the whole, the Problem Solvers plan would in fact solve problems. But there’s a big one
Even hinting that the administration doesn’t take the mandate seriously could have a hugely detrimental effect on the insurance exchanges because a key driver of cost increases is the number of younger, healthier people who choose to pay a fine rather than buy coverage.
The courts would be the only real recourse for ACA supporters if Trump decides to flout his responsibility to enforce the law.
But
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CREDIT:
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