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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Dennis K would shut down energy production in Ohio

 photo credit: change-links.org

From cleveland.com

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dennis Kucinich on Thursday unveiled a series of proposals designed to bring a complete end to oil and gas drilling in Ohio.

At a news conference in downtown Columbus, the liberal former congressman and presidential candidate said that as governor, he would use eminent domain to acquire and close all existing traditional and fracking-style oil and gas wells in the state. Kucinich pledged to block any new drilling permits and order a statewide injection-well ban.

In addition, Kucinich would direct the Ohio State Highway Patrol to stop, inspect, and turn away vehicles found with fracking waste.

Sounds like a winning strategy.

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Another reason not to watch the Super Bowl

Even those of us who are not football fans sometimes turn the TV on just to watch the ads. Not this year. The Army Times reports:

AMVETS officials are decrying "corporate censorship" from the National Football League for their decision not to run an ad in their Super Bowl program which responds to league players’ decision to kneel for the national anthem in protest of national equality issues.

The ad, which would have cost the veterans organization $30,000, features the tag "#PleaseStand" with a picture of service members saluting the American flag and information on how to donate to the congressionally-chartered organization.

Group leaders said NFL officials refused to include the ad in their Super Bowl publication, but did not issue a reason why.

Ace of Spades comments:

The NFL claims it doesn't permit ads that could be interpreted as making a political statement.

Oh, sure, the NFL totally doesn't want political statements during its games. That's why it's permitted a year and a half of National Anthem protests, I guess.

Sad to see the American sports culture in self-destruct mode.

UPDATE: The Hill reports that former NFL quarterback and Kneeler-in-Chief Colin Kaepernick has been named a finalist for the NFL Players Association 'Community MVP' award.  

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Chuck Schumer ends his shutdown

Via Instapundit:


More commentary at Legal Insurrection here.

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Multiculturalism: not good

Photo credit: onlyinus.wordpress.com

American children

Many of my relatives and friends take pride in their enthusiastic embrace of multiculturalism. I oppose it because it discourages assimilation, and it celebrates cultural differences rather than common values. As far as Cleveland Tea Party is concerned, one of the core values, that of limited government, is subverted by uncontrolled immigration that expands the nanny state and dilutes our cultural fabric. The melting pot is giving way to the societal mosaic, more apt to shatter.

A Canadian contributor to PJ Media, David Solway, eloquently summarizes “The Scourge of Multiculturalism” (h/t Instapundit):

The argument made by immigration and refugee enthusiasts, namely that the Western democracies were founded and settled by immigrants and therefore should continue to welcome newcomers, is valid only to a point. In the course of time the original settlers created a national identity, a sense of communal membership in a common world unified by custom and law. It is that identity that should be preserved. . . .

I am not opposed to immigration per se, only to ill-advised and special interest agendas that would weaken and adulterate the stable domestic accords arrived at over many generations.

To say “we are a nation of immigrants,” then, is immaterial. We are now a nation of citizens. Skilled immigrants, properly screened and taking into account real domestic needs, should be part of the country’s future, but not in multiples that threaten to dilute a nation’s internal cohesion, not from backward countries whose inhabitants are all too often uneducated, illiterate and functionally unassimilable, and certainly not from parts of the world -- in particular, the Islamic world -- whose history, culture, theology and politics have ranged it against everything that Western civilization comprises. The plight of European nations like Germany, Sweden, England and France, sinking into a morass of civil unrest, criminal violence and legal subversion, should be an incontrovertible object lesson that multiculturalism is the devil’s gift to a forgetful and undeserving people.

The congeries of welfare recipients bankrupting our fiscal resources, inner-city ghettoes of disaffected and belligerent residents, the array of lawfare plaintiffs, the proliferation of de facto censorship procedures . . . and the consequent erosion of community standards are the poisoned fruit of such unstructured immigration protocols -- a scourge prettified under the term “multiculturalism.” 

. . .

There is no shame in cherishing and defending one’s “old country” patrimony and the values upon which civic and communal life are founded. This has nothing to do with an antecedent “Eurocentrism” that ostensibly degrades other peoples or with the risible canard of “white supremacy,” but with the sense of belonging to, for all its flaws and errors, the greatest civilization ever to appear on earth, a Judeo-Hellenic-Christian civilization that gave us, among innumerable gifts, the Bible and the Greek library, the magna carta, the concept of individual liberty, scientific and medical advances never before seen, and a technological, commercial and industrial infrastructure that has made life easier for untold millions.

Full essay is here.

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General Mattis on the government shutdown

DC Whispers shared General “Mad Dog” James Mattis’s letter to our men and women in uniform concerning the government shutdown:

Click to embiggen, if necessary.

Photo credit: theepochtimes.com

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One year ago today

Photo credit religionnews.com

The inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States took place one year ago today. Several hundred thousand people witnessed in person the ceremony held on Friday, January 20, 2017 on the West Front of the United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.

President-elect Donald J. Trump was sworn into office by Chief Justice John Roberts, with his hand on two Bibles held by his wife Melania. Wow. 

wstale.com

  

Fashion note: Melania's gown for the Inauguration evening festivities is now in the Smithsonian. But somewhere I read (and recent searches failed to find the source) that FLOTUS conceived of the dress as an homage to America’s founding documents, and her concept of the dress was symbolic of those founding documents on parchment, complete with red ribbon. OK, I could not find the interview, but here’s a visual:

Happy Anniversary!

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