Congress in 2014 ordered the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to develop a new payment system for the more than 400 million clinical laboratory tests that Medicare pays for each year so that prices would be more closely aligned with those paid by private insurers.
The Trump administration on Monday approved a request from Maine to set up a program to help moderate rising health insurance costs. CMS said in a letter to the state that it will approve a reinsurance program from January 2019 to Dec. 31, 2023.
CMS has approved Wisconsin’s plan to launch a state reinsurance program from 2019 to 2023 to help reduce individual state premiums and control the growth of state health care spending.
Maryland is now the fourth U.S. state in recent years to contemplate a “single payer” government health plan. In California, the cost of creating a single-payer system was an enormous political obstacle.
Even if Congress were to double what it collects in individual and corporate income taxes, there still wouldn’t be enough money added to the federal coffers to finance the costs of Medicare for All.
A new study argues that Congress’ repeal of the individual mandate and a Trump administration rule that would expand the sale and renewal of short-term policies will have a devastating effect on 2019 premiums.But a comparison of the “sabotage” estimates with preliminary 2019 rate filings in cities in 17 states compiled by the Kaiser Family Foundation suggests they vastly overestimated the effects of these policy changes on premiums.
Democrats are making an election issue of rising health care costs, so it’s strange that they are now criticizing a new Trump Administration rule that would make cheaper insurance available to more Americans. Maybe they fear people will like it.
At long last, the Trump administration has created a “freedom option” for people suffering under Obamacare. A final rulemaking reverses an Obama-era regulation that exposed the sick to medical underwriting.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar recently outlined an ambitious health care policy agenda that is positively Reaganesque. The states’ diverse health insurance problems, he noted, are best resolved by the people of the states themselves.
Having stacked the deck in favor of Medicare for All, a new report comes up with a price tag: By 2031, the federal government would be spending an additional $4.2 trillion a year. For reference, the amount is slightly more than the total the U.S. government expects to spend this year.