Republicans should impose two parameters on any block-grant proposal
- States can be given enormous freedom to deviate from Obamacare, so long as people who come to the individual market after paying premiums for group insurance for many years can buy insurance that is similar to what employers offer for a similar premium. (I have previously described how I think this could be done.)
- States can offer limited benefit insurance(buying whatever the tax credit will buy and allowing auto-enrollment and potentially insuring an additional 30 million people) provided that they set aside safety net money to take care of the really expensive cases ($1 million premature baby, for example.)
. . .
Thirty-nine health policy experts and representatives of a broad cross-section of organizations joined in signing a comment letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services regarding its proposed rule on Short-Term, Limited-Duration Insurance.
They argue that the Obama administration exerted “regulatory overreach” in limiting the sale of short-term policies to 90 days and prohibiting their renewal “in an effort to limit the sale of these policies, constrain consumer choice, and impose federal regulations on a product whose regulation the statute reserves to the states.”
“We hope this will convince CMS to amend its proposed rule to allow, among other things, renewability of short-term policies,” said Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, who helped organize the letter.
. . .
As goes Iowa, so goes the nation — or at least that’s the conventional wisdom during presidential elections. Let’s hope the same rule applies to healthcare reform.
Earlier this month, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a law that takes advantage of a major loophole in Obamacare. The legislation, based on a similar effort in Tennessee, enables any Iowan to enroll in a “health benefit plan” sponsored by the Iowa Farm Bureau. Due to a legal technicality, the plans aren’t subject to Obamacare’s premium-inflating regulations.
The reform is a laudable attempt to give consumers an affordable alternative to the plans for sale on Obamacare’s exchanges. Until Congress makes good on its promise to repeal and replace the law, other states can liberate their residents from the law’s financial burdens by following Iowa’s lead.
. . .
In 2005 and 2009, Elizabeth Warren and her co-authors released two papers claiming that more than 50 percent of all bankruptcy filings in the U.S. were caused by medical debts. I wrote about the problems with these studies when they first came out, and even testified in Congress against reading too much into the findings of these studies because they suffered from several biases. Now an academic study published in the New England Journal of Medicine is skeptical of these results as well. The study tracks a stratified sample of adults between the ages of 25 and 64 who were admitted to the hospital for non-birth-related reasons between 2003 and 2007. It finds that fewer than 4 percent of hospitalizations resulted in bankruptcies, far lower than the 2009 study’s claimed 62 percent.
. . .
A revival movement is sweeping the nation. Millions of souls have already been converted, thanks to a charismatic preacher and his passionate disciples.
I’m talking, of course, about the doctrine of “Medicare for All” and its chief evangelist, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. The socialist senator’s sermons appear to have swayed the masses. In 42 states, a majority of residents now support a Medicare-for-All system, according to new research from Data for Progress, a left-wing think tank. That’s a significant increase from September of last year, when fewer than half of Americans supported single-payer.
. . .
Since the managed care debacle of the 1990s, billions of dollars have been spent in time and resources to improve and measure the quality of patient care. However, measuring the quality of care in the effort to improve it in a cost-efficient manner is showing evidence of being counter-productive, particularly for small physician practices and practices with complex patient populations.
. . .
Donald Trump’s health secretary was on fire during a March 5 address to the Federation of American Hospitals. Alex Azar, the former Eli Lilly executive now charged with overseeing everything from Medicare to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, outlined plans to achieve nothing less than the “value-based transformation” of American health care.
“Today’s healthcare system is simply not delivering outcomes commensurate with its cost,” he said. And Azar put his biggest finger on a commonly blamed problem: the fact that American health care is “paying for procedures and sickness” instead of “outcomes and wellness.”
. . .
Support for single-payer health care has reached an all-time high, according to Gallup. Seven in 10 Democratic voters — and one in three Republicans — favor a government takeover of the health sector.
They should be careful what they wish for. Single-payer systems have failed everywhere they’ve been implemented, from the United Kingdom to Canada. Americans who fall for single-payer’s promise of “universal health coverage” at lower cost will instead find themselves facing long waits for subpar care.
. . .
The Trump administration is preparing to offer Americans an affordable alternative to the high-cost coverage on Obamacare’s exchanges by overturning one of the previous administration’s most burdensome regulations.
On February 20, the Department of Health and Human Services released a proposed rule based on President Trump’s October 12, 2017, Executive Order that would allow insurers to sell “short-term” health plans that provide coverage for up to 364 days. The proposed rule is open for comment for 60 days. The measure would nullify an Obama administration directive issued in October 2016 that banned short-term plans lasting longer than three months.
. . .
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.