How does Washington define “bipartisan”? We are about to find out if it means that Republicans surrender to everything Democrats want, or if it means a genuine trade of policy priorities in which both sides get something and the country benefits.
That’s the question to ask about this week’s deal between Republican Lamar Alexander and Democrat Patty Murray to appropriate two years of funding for Obama Care’s “cost-sharing” reductions that flow to insurers. The Trump Administration last week cut off these subsidies, which the Obama Administration paid without an appropriation from Congress. A federal judge ruled last year that those payments are illegal. Democrats would also get about $100 million for advertising ObamaCare.
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Any agreement to restore funding for cost-sharing payments should be tied to provisions allowing families to opt out of ObamaCare and buy coverage that meets their individual needs. The compromise should also grant insurers the right to sell such plans independent of ObamaCare’s rules and its rigged risk pool.
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By our deadline Friday the world had continued to spin without interruption-planes taking off and landing; men and women commuting home after another week at work-and if you’re reading this then you survived the ObamaCare subsidy apocalypse of 2017. We’re referring to the political meltdown over the Trump Administration’s decision to end extralegal payments to insurers.
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President Trump’s executive order directs federal agencies to write new rules that would allow consumers to buy less regulated, less expensive health insurance plans. The agencies will take months to enact new regulations and after that it’s unclear when consumers should expect premium relief. But this could be a game changer for those seeking more insurance options than have been permitted under ObamaCare.
One piece of this week’s order directs the Labor Department to “consider expanding access” to Association Health Plans, which would allow small businesses to team up to offer insurance. The order also seeks to expand the flexibility and use of health reimbursement arrangements, giving employees more flexibility in how they spend the pretax dollars in their accounts, including paying insurance premiums. A third part of the order directs cabinet agencies to consider new rules on allowing short-term insurance plans for up to a year to cover periods between more stable coverage (from the three months allowed Obama administration rules).
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Republicans have now failed twice to repeal and replace ObamaCare. But their whole focus has been wrong. The debate centered, like ObamaCare, on the number of people with health insurance. A more direct path to broadening access would be to reduce the cost of care. This means creating market conditions long proven to bring down prices while improving quality—empowering consumers to seek value, increasing the supply of care, and stimulating competition.
Republicans have a new promise on health care: It’s not over. As the GOP trumpeted the framework of a new tax overhaul plan at the Capitol on Wednesday, lawmakers wrestled with their message to voters after promises to roll back the Affordable Care Act officially came up short Tuesday. The GOP health-care push “is not going to stop. It’s just that we’re not going to focus solely on that,” said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn. President Trump said he now expects a bill to pass early next year. He also said he would issue an executive order, likely next week, targeting rules that make it hard for insurers to sell policies across state lines.
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Health insurers appeared likely to offer Affordable Care Act plans in all U.S. counties next year, despite months of drama and worries among some state officials about last-minute exits, ahead of a late-Wednesday deadline.
Some major insurers that had signaled that they might pull back, including Cigna Corp. , Health Care Service Corp., Molina Healthcare Inc., Highmark Health and Independence Blue Cross, this week said they would stick to the states and regions where they had filed to offer ACA coverage.
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Senate Republicans on Tuesday abandoned their latest effort to replace ObamaCare, or, more precisely, a handful of Senators defeated the Graham-Cassidy proposal despite their campaign rhetoric. Mark them down as ObamaCare’s saviors.
Top billing goes to Kentucky’s Rand Paul, who rode into Congress in 2010 on repealing the Affordable Care Act but in office has become the definition of a feckless libertarian. He helped to kill the Senate’s first replacement bill over the summer because it did not repeal every last footnote in the law. Then he supported “skinny repeal” that merely repealed the individual and employer mandates and medical-device tax, justifying that vote as realistic.
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The Trump administration plans to shut down healthcare.gov, a website consumers use to sign up for the Affordable Care Act, for 12 hours on nearly every Sunday of the coming ACA enrollment season.
The outages, which the administration says are for maintenance, will occur from midnight through noon on every Sunday other than Dec. 10. This year’s enrollment season, which the administration has shortened to half the length of previous years, will run from Nov. 1 through Dec. 15 for states that use the federal marketplace.
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