Unraveling Obamacare bit by bit

Steve Breen cartoon via strangefunnies.blogspot.com

Today, Mr. Speaker Gingrich posted at Fox and to his newsletter list his assessment of the Trump Administration’s ongoing efforts to bring down healthcare costs, chip away at what remains of Obamacare, and gradually introduce better options for all Americans. Here is part of his posting:

President Trump has also moved beyond opposing Obamacare and has begun to develop a better system for the future. What replaces Obamacare is at least as important as voting to repeal it.

Replacing Obamacare requires a lot of specific steps to return to a market-based, decentralized system in 50 different states. The Trump Administration and its Republican allies in Congress have been working diligently in that direction.

At the Department of Labor, Secretary Alexander Acosta issued proposed rules which would dramatically expand the availability of Association Health Plans. These plans could be national and regional, allowing for the sale of insurance across state lines, but critically still maintain state autonomy in regulating insurance – which will help police against fraud. Some of the details of the rules may need to be improved to prevent insurance companies from cherry-picking healthy customers, but overall this represents a potentially game-changing reform that could have huge cost saving implications for small business owners and the self-employed.

The Trump Administration has also allowed insurers to continue offering “grandmothered” plans created prior to Obamacare, maintaining these lower cost plans for long-time customers. This saved many small businesses and self-employed people a lot of money and anxiety which would have been caused by the Obamacare plan to force them into the government system even if they were happy with their current plan.

In addition, the Trump Administration fixed a number of loopholes in the Obamacare enrollment rules, which some customers had been using to game the system to avoid paying their premiums and wait until they got sick to get coverage, by claiming they qualified for a “Special Enrollment Period.” This fraud drove up prices for everyone. The Trump Administration issued new rules that fixed a number of these problems.

President Trump also made it easier for people to shop for health insurance without using the Healthcare.gov website. For 2019 enrollment, customers can fully use the insurer websites, as well as aggregators like ehealthinsurance.com. All of this increases convenience, expands choice, and makes lower costs possible.

Finally, just last week, Congress enacted a key reform which flew almost completely under the media’s radar. The Continuing Resolution passed to reopen the government this week suspended the health insurance tax for one year, the device tax for two years, and delayed the Cadillac tax until 2022, all of which were part of Obamacare. All of these taxes were simply passed on to patients in the form of higher premiums, so each of these steps will save patients money.

“Replacing Obamacare requires a lot of specific steps to return to a market-based, decentralized system in 50 different states.” So here is related news:

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Concerned about soaring health care costs, Idaho on Wednesday revealed a plan that will allow insurance companies to sell cheap policies that ditch key provisions of the Affordable Care Act.

It's believed to be the first state to take formal steps without prior federal approval for creating policies that do not comply with the Obama-era health care law. Health care experts say the move is legally dubious, a concern supported by internal records obtained by The Associated Press.

Idaho Department of Insurance Director Dean Cameron said the move is necessary to make cheaper plans available to more people. Otherwise, he said he fears the state's individual health insurance marketplace will eventually collapse as healthy residents choose to go uninsured rather than pay for expensive plans that comply with the federal law.

Hope to see more of this. The rest of Newt’s article is here.

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