Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey heads to Washington this week to attend the Conservative Political Action Conference. The Washington Examiner asked him to preview his main priorities regarding Obamacare replacement and what they should know about Arizona’s healthcare challenges.
He said, “The damage from Obamacare is clear: Insurance markets have been wrecked; premiums have soared; and promises, such as “you can keep your doctor,” have been broken. That’s what happens when one party imposes a one-size-fits-all solution on one-sixth of the country’s economy without even bothering to read the bill. Congress should do the opposite of what occurred in 2010: It should seek to expand choices for consumers, not limit them; it should encourage innovation in the states, not stifle it; and it should read the bill and understand the implications of what it’s passing instead of simply hoping for the best despite ample evidence to the contrary.”
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A major insurer on Wednesday reported a huge drop in the number of Obamacare customers it has.
Humana reported in its latest fourth quarter 2016 earnings Wednesday that total enrollment in the individual market, which includes Obamacare’s exchanges, declined by 69 percent in January 2017 compared to the month before.
The company said on Dec. 31 it had about 450,800 in the individual market, which includes Obamacare’s marketplaces. However, in January 2017 membership dropped by 69 percent to 204,000.
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Senate Democrats have pummeled Rep. Tom Price, President Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, for supporting Medicaid block grants, but it’s a policy unlikely to win a place in Republicans’ Obamacare repeal-and-replace plan.
If Republicans succeed in making significant changes to Medicaid, they more likely would turn to a more moderate per-capita system embraced by a wider swath of Republicans. Like block grants, a per-capita system would limit federal contributions, but it would allow federal assistance to rise with enrollment growth.
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No one’s interested in trying to save Obamacare’s centerpiece as it faces certain death.
Even as the healthcare industry heavily lobbies Republicans to keep the Affordable Care Act’s other main components, such as its subsidies and Medicaid expansion, doctors, hospitals and insurers are stepping away from the law’s individual mandate for people to buy insurance or pay a fine.
Not even Democrats are campaigning to keep the mandate, which was once viewed as the key to making Obamacare successful. The thought was that the mandate would prompt enough healthy young people to buy coverage to keep premiums stable. But nearly everyone agrees it didn’t work as well as intended. And repealing it is top of list for Republicans.
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The Trump administration intends to publish a new regulation soon aimed at stabilizing Obamacare’s marketplaces, just as insurers are weighing whether to participate next year.
The administration hasn’t released the text for the regulations or said whether it could be finalized before insurers face the first deadlines this spring for submitting plans for 2018.
The Office of Management and Budget released a notice on a pending rule received Feb. 1 aimed at stabilizing Obamacare markets.
The rule was received the same day that insurers told Congress that they need to know soon whether cost-sharing reduction payments will be reimbursed in 2018.
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House Republicans on Wednesday highlighted changes to Medicaid in a series of bills that target eligibility, but got stiff pushback from Democrats who argue the GOP actually wants to cut federal aid to low-income Americans.
A subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee examined three draft bills that would prevent lottery winners and illegal immigrants from getting Medicaid coverage. Another bill would close a loophole that allows couples to get Medicaid although their income and assets are beyond the threshold for eligibility.
Republicans argued the bills, introduced in earlier Congresses, are needed to reform an entitlement program that has used more and more federal funding.
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The Republican congressional leadership has made a new timetable for gutting the Affordable Care Act, aiming to get legislation done by March or possibly April.
But that doesn’t give insurers much time to meet their first deadline for submitting plans for 2018 on the individual market, which includes the law’s exchanges.
A rule published four days before President Trump took office set the deadlines for insurers to sell health plans on the individual market, which is for people who don’t get insurance through their jobs. Democrats have charged that Republicans will throw the market into chaos by repealing the law without an alternative, with Republicans responding that the markets are already in turmoil.
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Republicans have been rolling out their suggestions for replacing Obamacare, providing lots of ideas for leadership to draw from but also highlighting intra-party divisions over how it should be done.
Some lawmakers want to provide people with tax credits to buy coverage, while others want deductions. Some House conservatives are suspicious of phasing out Obamacare gradually. And a growing group of senators are stressing that replace must happen at the same time as repeal.
The party is united around the idea that there must be some sort of healthcare reform, but it’s divided over how quickly to repeal the law, how long it should take to phase out and whether a replacement needs to be passed at the same time.
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Two Republican senators are working on legislation that would let states decide whether they want to keep Obamacare or move to a different system. Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Susan Collins of Maine both hinted on the Senate floor Tuesday about a bill that would preserve Obamacare, but only for states that choose to keep it. Cassidy said the bill would be essentially the same as a bill he introduced in the last Congress called the Patients Freedom Act. It lets states decide if they want to stay in Obamacare if it is working or leave. “The state could go with the alternative, which we will lay out, the state could opt for nothing — no Medicaid expansion and no help for lower-income folks — or the state could opt to stay in Obamacare,” Cassidy said.
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House Speaker Paul Ryan, incoming Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price and other top GOP leaders have kept up their barrage against the Affordable Care Act’s premium increases and reduced competition, even after their massively successful election last month.
“This law is hurting families in America,” Ryan said before Congress left Washington for the holidays.
“This law is canceling insurance plans people wanted, this law is giving people repeated double-digit premium increases, this law is raising deductibles so high it doesn’t even feel like you have insurance,” he said. “So you have to bring Obamacare relief as fast as we possibly can in 2017, and that is our plan.”
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