“If the Supreme Court rules that Obamacare is out,” President Donald Trump said last week, “we’ll have a plan that is far better than Obamacare.”
A look at his fiscal year 2020 budget shows that the president has a plan to reduce costs and increase health care choices. His plan would achieve this by redirecting federal premium subsidies and Medicaid expansion money into grants to states. States would be required to use the money to establish consumer-centered programs that make health insurance affordable regardless of income or medical condition.
The president’s proposal is buttressed by a growing body of evidence that relaxing federal regulations and freeing the states to innovate makes health care more affordable for families and small businesses.
Two Democratic senators rolled out a proposal Tuesday that would allow anyone to buy Medicare plans.
The introduction of “Medicare X” comes as the Democratic Party debates its next steps on health care, with the left wing of the caucus pushing for a single-payer “Medicare for all” system and more moderate members supporting efforts to strengthen the ACA.
“I just think this is a much more practical way of trying to achieve the objective of universal coverage, and over time, a reduction in our expenditures on health care, then practically any other proposal that’s been made since the ACA was passed,” said Sen. Michael Benet (D-CO), who sponsored the bill with Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA).
There’s a new entry into the rising Democratic debate over wide-ranging overhauls of the US health care system, this one from a House Democratic freshman who flipped a Republican district in 2018.
New York Democratic Rep. Antonio Delgado plans to introduce legislation Monday that would allow all Americans to buy into a version of Medicare — an approach designed to avoid the substantial system-wide overhaul that would come with any effort to create a government-run health care system.
The Trump administration today approved Utah’s request for a scaled-back Medicaid expansion with a work requirement just days after a federal judge blocked similar rules from taking effect in Kentucky and Arkansas.
The approval also lets Utah cap program enrollment if the state runs out of money and marks the first phase of a plan to replace a Medicaid expansion voters approved last November with a scaled-down program covering roughly 60,000 fewer people.
On Wednesday, conservative policy leaders met with reporters at the Heritage Foundation to discuss the framework for Republican health care reform. The policy experts admitted that Republicans start with a “credibility gap” on health care, but argued that limited government approaches will better achieve the goals of driving down costs, providing more options, and helping the most vulnerable obtain health insurance.
“There is a credibility gap,” Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, admitted to PJ Media in the briefing. “I think the reason conservatives are in that gap is because they spent so much time talking about these little levers that they would pull from a government perspective, and not enough time talking about goals.”
In order to bridge the “credibility gap,” Turner directly addressed the key goals of health care reform and explained how the Health Care Choices Proposal presented by the Health Policy Consensus Group would accomplish those goals.
Under a plan announced Monday, the newly eligible for Medicaid in Nebraska will have different benefits and requirements than others on Medicaid. To get full coverage, they would have to work, care for a family member, volunteer, look for work, or attend college or an apprenticeship. Matthew Van Patton, the state Medicaid director, said the newly eligible would be offered two levels of coverage, basic and prime. He said basic coverage would be modeled after a Blue Cross Blue Shield small group insurance plan, rather than traditional Medicaid coverage.
When the Idaho Senate came to order on Monday morning, it seemed that the work requirements many Idaho Republicans wanted to tack on to voter-approved Medicaid expansion might be dead in the water.
After all, a federal judge last week struck down such work requirements in Arkansas and Kentucky.
But the Republicans pressed on, undeterred. Senators on Monday introduced a series of amendments to an existing bill. Unlike the work requirements that have been discussed in Idaho and other states, failure to comply wouldn’t mean losing Medicaid. People still would have coverage. They would just have a co-pay imposed on them — such as $5 to $30 for a doctor’s appointment — until they complied. Some people would be exempt, such as parents, caregivers and those filing for disability.
| Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson is asking the Trump administration to appeal a federal judge’s decision to strike down the state’s Medicaid work requirements. “I remain fully committed to the work requirement and we are in this for the long haul because we believe it is the right policy,” Hutchinson, a Republican, said in a press conference Thursday. Hutchinson said that he thought the judge’s ruling was wrong, and that he had just gotten off the phone with members of the Trump administration, who remained committed to the program. |
A federal judge on Wednesday threw out Medicaid work requirements in two states. In twin rulings, Judge James E. Boasberg of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia rejected for a second time Kentucky’s attempt to require recipients to work or volunteer as a condition of coverage and blocked a similar rule in Arkansas. Seema Verma, who is in charge of the Medicaid program, said “We will continue to defend our efforts to give states greater flexibility to help low income Americans rise out of poverty.” The ruling will be appealed.
A federal judge on Thursday rejected the Trump administration’s attempts to expand access to association health plan. U.S. District Judge John Bates in Washington said the administration’s final rule allowing associations and employers to band together to create AHPs goes beyond its authority under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). The Trump administration’s rule allows employers to join together to gain more efficiencies of scale in purchasing coverage and services, and the plans are more affordable because they don’t have to follow many ACA rules.