The Wall Street Journal

Obama Care survived a GOP repeal attempt but the law’s prognosis remains poor—higher premiums and insurer flight. Some Republicans would be happy to dump money into the exchanges and move on, so credit the Trump Administration for a proposal that puts consumer choice ahead of politics.

On Tuesday the Health and Human Services Department proposed a rule for short-term, limited duration health insurance as an alternative to the ObamaCare exchanges. Insurers would have to make clear that the plans, which could last for less than 12 months, would be liberated from the Affordable Care Act’s benefit and other mandates.
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Businesses are pushing back on the Internal Revenue Service’s decision to begin enforcing the Affordable Care Act’s employer insurance mandate, challenging penalties that run into the millions and asserting the agency is wrong to impose the fines.

The ACA imposes a penalty on employers with more than 50 workers who don’t provide qualifying coverage to employees, but the fines weren’t initially enforced. In November, the IRS said it would begin assessing penalties, starting with companies that failed to comply in 2015, when parts of the employer mandate first kicked in.

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Amazon is looking to turn its medical-supplies business into a major supplier to U.S. hospitals and outpatient clinics.  The online retailer is pushing hard to expand its foothold in medical supplies, creating a marketplace where hospitals could shop to stock emergency rooms, operating suites and outpatient facilities.

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Amazon announced Tuesday that it will join with J.P. Morgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway to wade into the jungle of U.S. health care, and the news slashed billions in stock-market value from health-care companies in mere hours. American health care could benefit from creative destruction, though this would be Amazon’s toughest fixer upper to date.

The announcement offered no details—nothing on if the companies will set up provider networks or walk-in clinics or what. But an early red flag: The press release says the group will form an “independent company that is free from profit-making incentives and constraints.”

The problem with U.S. health care is not an incentive for profit, which has driven innovation and cures for diseases like hepatitis C. The fundamental problem is that the cost of a service is disconnected from underlying value. Patients don’t know the price of services and consume health care as if it’s free since government or employers are the third-party payers for most Americans.

Americans are familiar with the horrors of the opioid crisis, and government at every level has tried to respond with spending on treatment programs and more. But one area that deserves more scrutiny is how government programs may be contributing to the epidemic.

Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson released a report this month from the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that connects the dots between Medicaid and the opioid epidemic. The report doesn’t claim too much, conceding that everything from too many prescriptions to drug marketing contributed to the epidemic.

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When Brian Day opened the Cambie Surgery Centre in 1996, he had a simple goal. Dr. Day, an orthopedic surgeon from Vancouver, British Columbia, wanted to provide timely, state-of-the-art medical care to Canadians who were unwilling to wait months—even years—for surgery they needed. Canada’s single-payer health-care system, known as Medicare, is notoriously sluggish. But private clinics like Cambie are prohibited from charging most patients for operations that public hospitals provide free. Dr. Day is challenging that prohibition before the provincial Supreme Court. If it rules in his favor, it could alter the future of Canadian health care.

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Sen. Bernie Sanders will hold an online town-hall meeting next Tuesday regarding his single-payer health-care legislation. Mr. Sanders calls it “Medicare for All.” But the text of the bill itself reveals a more accurate name: Medicare for None. The Orwellian way in which Mr. Sanders characterizes his plan speaks to the larger problem facing the left, whose plans for health care remain so radical that speaking of them honestly would prompt instant repulsion from most voters.

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The Trump Administration is on a mission to rescue health-care markets and consumers from ObamaCare’s shrinking choices and higher prices. Witness the Labor Department’s proposal to allow small businesses to band together to provide insurance on equal footing with corporations and unions.

The share of workers at small businesses with employer-sponsored health benefits has dropped by a quarter since 2010 as insurance costs have ballooned in part due to government mandates. About 11 million workers employed by small businesses are uninsured. Some businesses have dropped their workers onto state insurance exchanges where premiums are subsidized by taxpayers.

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Congress has no choice but to revisit the issue of health reform, and leaders have the greatest opportunity by tackling Medicaid. In 2016 the federal government spent $42 billion on ObamaCare’s exchanges. It spent $358 billion on Medicaid. States and localities pitched in another $208 billion, for a total national Medicaid expenditure of $566 billion in 2016. The growth in spending on health-care entitlements like Medicaid and Medicare threatens to overwhelm the Treasury, starving the federal government of the funds it needs to pay for everything else, including education, welfare and national defense.

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Washington continues to debate health policy as if the number of people covered by government insurance programs is the key measurement of success. This week brought more evidence that the ObamaCare experiment of signing up millions more people for subsidized coverage has not made Americans healthier.

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