Trump Signs Executive Order to Loosen Obamacare Rules for Businesses
“The time has come to give Americans the freedom to purchase health insurance across state lines…”
President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to start loosening some rules associated with Obamacare after the Republican controlled Congress failed many times to repeal the healthcare law. From Fox News:
According to officials, Trump will direct the secretary of labor to consider expanding access to Association Health Plans, which could allow employers to form groups across state lines offering coverage. According to the White House, these plans could offer lower rates.
Those “association health plans” could be shielded from some state and federal insurance requirements. But responding to concerns, the White House said participating employers could not exclude any workers from the plan, or charge more to those in poor health.
The order also calls on other federal agencies to consider expanding coverage in low-cost, short-term insurance plans not subject to ObamaCare rules.
Trump said:
“The time has come to give Americans the freedom to purchase health insurance across state lines, which will create a truly competitive national marketplace that will bring costs way down and provide far better care,” Trump said in a statement.
So overall, this executive order “does not make changes itself; rather it directs agencies to issue new regulations or guidance.” Officials said all of this could take months. The agencies and the secretaries will have to report to Trump in 180 days “about any changes that could be made, at the state or the federal level, to increase choices for consumers.”
This means that the executive order will not affect Obamacare open enrollment that starts on November 1.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who voted no on the times Congress tried to repeal Obamacare, stood behind Trump as he signed the order. In an op-ed at Breitbart, Paul explained why he chose to support this EO:
How will it work? Well, nationwide associations like the National Restaurant Association will be allowed to form groups across state lines and, with the leverage of size, demand Big Insurance bring down their outrageous premiums.
Many of the 28 million people left behind by Obamacare who still don’t have insurance work low-wage jobs in our fast food restaurants. The President’s decision today will allow workers from two million restaurants to come together to form a buying group and through sheer size get cheaper and better insurance.
Millions of people will be eligible for the same group insurance that big corporations offer. In fact, Health Associations may grow to be larger than the largest of our corporations. Currently, about half of private insurance is cross-state, self-insured ERISA plans, and most employees love them. The President’s action today will allow the millions of people in the individual market an escape route to group insurance.
Association Health Plans will be among the biggest free-market reforms of health care in a generation, and it will do more to counter the impact of Obamacare than most of the repeal bills did, because it will actually go after regulations that the legislation didn’t touch due to Senate rules.
The critics believe that these options will attract too many healthy younger people, leaving Obamacare with the sicker and older crowd. But we have seen people already fleeing the Obamacare market after premiums have skyrocketed. Numerous insurance companies have dropped many Obamacare options due to high costs and not enough profits to keep offering its services.
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Comments
This is a great development.
You can tell, because (1) the scummy charles schumer has immediately run to microphones to lie about it, and (2) the GOPe is silent on it.
Best election ever.
Google “Granny Hawkins” and “Outlaw Josey Wales” and look at the picture.
Tell me that you did not enjoy Schumer’s acting better then.
I am all for getting rid of the trash that Obama has heaped upon us all. However, I’m afraid this sort of executive order is giving a get out of jail FREE card to McConnell and Ryan. The pressure isn’t on them as much to repeal Obamacare when it’s effects are lessened. And when the pendulum inevitably swings the other way and we have a Democrat president again, they can undo Trump’s EOs on this if Obamacare is still the law of the land.
At the same time tho, what Democrat is going to want to issue an EO directly taking away affordable coverage from people?
At least Obamacare had the preposition that the new coverage would be better and cheaper than the old coverage.
The restaurant industry employs about 13 million people. That’s a lot of people to piss off.
This cuts both ways.
McConnell and Ryan aren’t getting a pass. They’re further getting shown for the rats they are.
Youbknow it seems so ridiculously straight forward one has to ask why the black baby Jesus didn’t allow this from the start?
One might opine that providing cost savings to the end users was never their concern to start with.
The black Jesus, Barack “A Perv In Every Little Girl’s Room” Obama, knew – like every democrat who voted for the bill – that it was designed to fail and be replaced by government health care.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/taxanalysts/2017/01/12/social-welfare-on-the-cheap-why-obamacare-was-built-to-fail/#26f8ff6c718b
Obama/jarrett intended for the Republic to fall, period. Hollywood was right there with them.
The Crying Boehners were not far behind. They still are.
It’s a good move. I’m surprised they spent as much energy as they did attempting repeal, since the ACA law gives the Executive branch huge discretion about what constitutes “adequate” insurance. ACA gives President Trump vastly more power than he would have had without it.
Because regulations are much easier to reverse than laws.
Yes. All it would take is a democrat president to get elected. The whole thing would start all over again.
The biggest nightmare in all this the damage done by Justice John Roberts’ cowardice, allowing himself to be bought off and vote hellish laws like obamacare as Constitutional.
In the years to come, another ‘masked bill’ the democrats might try and call “Make Healthcare Great Again” will come forward, and become fascist law.
A little under half the nation is either indoctrinated, part of a leftist cult, or simply has their heads up their butts. They will support anything they see supported on a leftist comedy show. Until we take back our educational system from the pervs on the left, this will not change.
Then its up to you (thats the royal you btw) to get people in to the Senate and Congress to ensure laws like this DONT happen again! Kick out the Rhino’s and get proper people in who actually care about the small guy!
Front page of this AM’s San Jose Mercury News has several thumbnails above the masthead to preview stories inside. One states ACA premiums to rise sharply in California. The thumb nail? It is of Trump, of course, who has nothing to do with the story except by the slimmest of tangential reference. The real thrust of the story is the state slapping surcharges on ACA plans
I hope a lot of the sitting GOP get primaried out.
“Hope” nothing – gotta work at it. Relentlessly.
We are at war.
It will be interesting to see what litigation from the liberal states follow, challenging the power to pre-empt state law in the ACA itself and the methods.
There is no guarantee that this is going to work out well as advertised. Insurance cos can and do choose not to do business in certain states because the structure is not there to arbitrate and resolve disputed issues the way they would like. The feds need to be prepared for second, third, and fourth order of operations to create the field that is needed for insurers to do what is desired. POTUS and HHS need to sit down with insurers quickly to figure that out.
I am glad Trump did this, I have been advocating executive action against the ACA since the day of his inauguration. But other actions will be needed too, such as rolling back the requirements that have to be in any policy offered, and even consider a blanket exemption from the ACA and its penalties, while reversing the exemption from Congress.
As a believer in the Republican form of government, I am uneasy that Trump’s Executive Order puts the Feds into a matter that is outside of its Constitutional authorities, and historically regulated by the Sovereign States.
As a realist, I know that the Democrat’s enactment of Obamacare through highly questionable legislative tactics, coupled with bribes of the Democrat states, and Chief Justice Roberts’ legislating to uphold that law, changed the Constitutional relationship between the Feds and the States irrevocably in the area of health insurance – it was the equivalent of how the Feds usurped the authority of citizens and the States under the Commerce Clause.
So, if the liberal states, the Democrats in Congress, Big Insurance, and leftist interest groups file suit against the Executive Order, I suspect that the federal courts, now populated with many Trump nominated judges and aware of the serious damage Obamacare has visited upon middle class Americans, may strike down the Feds intrusion into matters Constitutionally granted to the States, and even Justice Roberts may reflect on the damage he did to his fellow citizens and the Constitution by his re-writing of the ‘Affordable’ Care Act.
We don’t need to deal with exemptions from Obamacare, we need to consign it to the dustbin of history and return to the legal concept of “insurance” and its regulation by the States.
Yes, but allowing Obama’s executive orders to stand un-reversed is suicide.
We have to collectively kick the GOPe out of office, or we will never get legislation passed.
McCain could give the same thumbs-down to a tax overhaul as he did to health care:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-finance-202/2017/10/12/the-finance-202-mccain-could-give-the-same-thumbs-down-to-a-tax-overhaul-as-he-did-to-health-care/59de982a30fb041a74e75cef/
THE AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE ACT. (A typical commmie misnomer,
such as “Deutsche Demokratische Republik” etc. etc.)
That piece of democrat junk was intentionally designed to fail,
to make their ultimate plan, full-blown socialized medicine,
inevitable.
No doubt, it would have worked, if the Hilda-Beast had made it to the Whitehouse.
We dodged that bullet, and the credit for that dodge goes to
the Donald. (Admit as much, Rags,. come on , be a man)