Category: Implementation

Congressional Republicans moved on Tuesday to defuse President Trump’s threat to cut off critical payments to health insurancecompanies, maneuvering around the president toward bipartisan legislation to shore up insurance markets under the Affordable Care Act.

Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the influential chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, announced that his panel would begin work in early September on legislation to “stabilize and strengthen the individual health insurance market” for 2018. He publicly urged Mr. Trump to continue making payments to health insurance companies to reimburse them for reducing the out-of-pocket medical expenses of low-income people.

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A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday allowed Democratic state attorneys general to defend subsidy payments to insurance companies under the Obamacare healthcare law, a critical part of funding for the statute that President Donald Trump has threatened to cut off.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit granted a motion filed by the 16 attorneys general, led by California’s Xavier Becerra and New York’s Eric Schneiderman.

President Donald Trump, frustrated that he and fellow Republicans in Congress have been unable to keep campaign promises to repeal and replace Obamacare, has threatened to stop making the so-called cost-sharing subsidy, or CSR, payments.

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The Senate GOP’s health failure is a political debacle that will compound for years, and the first predictable fallout is already here: Republicans in Congress are under pressure to bail out the Obama Care exchanges, even as Donald Trump threatens to let them collapse. The GOP needs to get at least some reform in return if it’s going to save Democrats and insurers from their own failed policies.

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President Donald Trump has recently twhreatened (that’s a threat communicated via Twitter) to stop payments of billions of dollars out of the federal treasury that have been going to insurance companies selling health insurance policies on the Exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act. Indeed, rumors are circulating that he may order a stop as early as tomorrow (August 1, 2017). Whether he does so this week, next week or next month, President Trump will be perfectly within his rights in stopping these illegal payments. It doesn’t matter whether these payments are “a good idea” or not or whether they actually save the federal government money.

With the House on recess and the Senate’s leader saying it’s time to move on, a bipartisan group of more than 40 House members said Monday that Congress needs to act quickly to stabilize the individual health insurance market.

A five-point plan from the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus would abandon any pretense of repealing the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, while boosting spending, repealing one tax, and relaxing regulations.

The caucus, co-chaired by Republican Rep. Tom Reed of New York and Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, is built around an agreement that once members reach consensus on issues, they pledge to vote as a bloc.

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President Donald Trump made one of his most explicit threats to cut off payments to insurance companies to force senators and lobbyists back to the bargaining table for a GOP health-care bill, and saying, for the first time, that he was also willing to cancel some of lawmakers’ health-care benefits.

“If a new HealthCare Bill is not approved quickly, BAILOUTS for Insurance Companies and BAILOUTS for Members of Congress will end very soon!” Mr. Trump tweeted Saturday.

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After 20 of the 24 Obamacare non-profit health insurance cooperatives collapsed, despite the influx of $2.4 billion in taxpayer funds, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that its trade association would also fail.

The National Alliance of State Health Cooperatives (NASCHO), the Obamacare co-op health insurance trade association, has quietly closed its doors, The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group has learned.

NASCHO once represented as many as 24 Obamacare non-profit co-ops that were intended to compete with for-profit commercial health care insurers and perhaps even drive them out of business. The Obama administration underwrote the experiment with $2.4 billion in long-term, low-interest loans.

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Weeks ago, President Donald Trump tweeted, “As I have always said, let Obamacare fail and then come together and do a great health care plan. Stay tuned!”

And indeed, the system established by the Affordable Care Act is collapsing on its own. Average premiums are up 105 percent since the health overhaul law took effect, and premiums will soar again next year, based upon early announcements. That will drive more young and healthy people away, further destabilizing the health insurance markets.

People in 40 percent of U.S. counties risk having only one “choice” of plan next year, and some may have none as insurers flee the market because of heavy losses.

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Anthem Inc. said that if it doesn’t quickly get more certainty about the future of the Affordable Care Act exchanges, it will likely further pull back its planned participation for next year, a threat that adds to the pressure on Senate Republicans as they struggle to pass health-care legislation.

The big insurer, speaking during its second-quarter earnings call, strongly emphasized that it needed answers about the future of federal payments that help reduce out-of-pocket costs for low-income ACA exchange-plan enrollees. Chief Executive Joseph R. Swedish said that without greater clarity, particularly around the cost-sharing payments, “we will need to revise our rate filings to further narrow our level of participation.” He added that the insurer may make decisions “in a relatively short period of time” and in September at the latest.

All eyes are on the Senate as it debates what to do about ObamaCare. But the House has a last chance this week to abolish one of the law’s most dangerous creations: a board with sweeping, unchecked power to ration care.

The Independent Payment Advisory Board—what critics call the death panel—would be an unelected, unaccountable body with broad powers to slash Medicare plans spending. But the law contains a living will for IPAB. If the president signs a congressional resolution extinguishing the panel by Aug. 15, it will never come into existence.

The real deadline is closer, since the House plans to recess Friday and not return until Sept. 5. But if the House does act, the Senate will have time to follow, since it plans to remain in session until mid-August.

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