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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