Key Takeaways
- It appears that Congress, backed by powerful special interests in the health care industry, is getting ready to bail out, once again, Obamacare’s a failing program.
- The bottom line: Taxpayers still end up paying more over the next several years for a failing health insurance scheme.
- We are witnessing the evolution of a classic government failure, and Congress is getting ready to reward that failure with another round of corporate bailouts.
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Late last year, President Trump issued Executive Order 13813, “Promoting Healthcare Choice and Competition Across the United States.” The goal was to help more Americans access additional affordable health care options. The executive order prioritizes three areas for improvement: association health plans (AHPs), short-term insurance, and health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs).
Enhancing additional affordable options are important given emerging news stories about non-subsidized families and individuals facing crushing insurance premiums and out of pocket costs and increases under the ACA.
The only consistent characteristic of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is its ability to generate litigation. The gift that keeps on giving for Obamacare opponents seems to defy common law doctrines curbing the practices of champerty and maintenance (frivolous lawsuits).
Last month 20 state attorneys general and two governors launched the latest lawsuit in federal district court in Texas, arguing that the upcoming repeal of tax penalties for the ACA’s individual mandate, as of January 2019, means that the entire law has become unconstitutional (or at least a number of its related insurance regulation provisions).
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The Trump administration rejected on Thursday Idaho’s plan to allow the sale of stripped-down, low-cost health insurance violates the ACA. The 2010 statute “remains the law, and we have a duty to enforce and uphold the law,” Seema Verma, the administrator of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said in a letter to the governor of Idaho, C.L. Otter. While rejecting Idaho’s plan in its current form, Ms. Verma encouraged the state to keep trying, and she suggested that, “with certain modifications,” its proposal might be acceptable.
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In a speech to hospital executives earlier this week, new Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar outlined his agenda for improving the value of health services provided to patients. He clearly understands that the number one problem in U.S. health care is the prevalence of wasteful spending on services that drive up costs without improving the health of patients.
The many previous efforts aimed at tackling this immense and complex problem have barely put a dent in it. Azar made it evident that, from his perspective, the solution is a market-driven system with informed and active consumers making cost-effective decisions about their own care. He was also appropriately ambitious as he begins his tenure, putting everyone on notice — including those with vested interests in the status quo, as well as his own HHS employees — that big changes are coming, one way or another.
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A state Senate panel Monday backed legislation that requires New Jerseyans to buy insurance or pay a fee — a mandate the Trump administration will end in 2019.
The move is a step toward protecting the health insurance marketplace created by the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.
The federal landmark health care law requires individuals to buy a policy if they do not have one or face a fine at tax time. The law was meant to ensure younger and healthier people who might otherwise forgo insurance will participate in the insurance market and share costs.
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In 1981, Congress created the home and community-based (HCBS) waiver program. These waivers allow states, if they choose, to extend home- and community-based Medicaid services to individuals who would otherwise qualify for care in a nursing home or institution. Essentially, these waivers allow truly needy individuals on Medicaid to receive additional care they need without being institutionalized.
The waiver programs are comprised of individuals with severe intellectual disabilities, traumatic brain injuries, spinal cord injuries, and mental illnesses, among other debilitating conditions.
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Arkansas on Monday became the third U.S. state to require that Medicaid recipients work or participate in employment activities as a condition of receiving health insurance as the Trump administration continues to approve state requests that fundamentally change the 50-year-old program.
Arkansas’s waiver would require beneficiaries to work or participate in job training or job search activities for at least 80 hours per month as a condition of receiving Medicaid, the government health insurance program for the poor and disabled. Those who fail to meet the requirements for three months of a plan year will not be able to re-enroll until the following plan year.
A federal appeals court is raising a potential hurdle to the settlement of a suit the House of Representatives brought against the Obama administration over billions of dollars in subsidies paid to insurers under Obamacare.
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals issued an order Monday questioning a deal the House, the Trump administration and liberal states announced last September to try to shut down the case.
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