In October, the Trump administration proposed a new rule that would expand the ways employers can use health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs) to provide their employees with high-quality, low-cost health coverage. The United States Department of the Treasury estimates that once the new rules go into effect, 800,000 employers will take advantage of HRAs, which could affect coverage for more than 10 million employees.
Senate Republicans on Wednesday blocked a vote on a resolution that would have allowed the Senate to intervene in a federal lawsuit against ObamaCare.
Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) objected to a vote on the resolution and accused Democrats of playing politics. Only one senator needs to object to block a unanimous consent motion.
“Regardless of what happens in this legal process, we look to protect people with pre-existing conditions,” Barrasso said.
President Trump was elected on his promise to stop other nations from taking advantage of the United States. Our allies let us pay for most of their own national defense needs. Treaties allowed once poor countries to hit American products with tariffs and trade barriers. The Paris agreement on climate change burdened our manufacturers and workers, while letting China and India build and expand without such onerous restrictions.
Health-care companies are making a last-minute push to delay ObamaCare taxes as part of a year-end government funding deal, but they face resistance from Democrats who want to punt the issue until next year when they control the House.
Powerful health-care lobbies are pushing lawmakers to delay the implementation of the taxes, worried about taking a financial hit. Lawmakers have voted to push off the health law’s medical device tax, health insurance tax, and tax on high-cost “Cadillac” health plans in the past with bipartisan support.
The House on Tuesday passed a bipartisan bill aimed at reversing the maternal mortality crisis in the U.S. in what supporters say is the strongest action yet that Congress has taken on the issue.
The bill from Reps. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.) and Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) would support state-level efforts to track and investigate pregnancy-related deaths, and then look for ways to prevent future deaths from occurring.
When the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) added healthy, able-bodied adults without dependent children to the list of beneficiaries, policymakers overlooked the substantial price paid by these recipients who, as the Congressional Budget Office once forecasted, forego hourly wages and earnings in order to maintain their Medicaid eligibility. Without a work requirement for able-bodied adults to receive Medicaid, studies have shown that the program tacitly encourages such recipients to stay home and not go to work. And, as it turns out, Medicaid’s non-work incentive has some not-so-healthy consequences.
Most Republican candidates failed to adequately address the issue of pre-existing conditions ahead of the midterm elections and for this they paid a political price. Voters said they trusted Democrats more on pre-existing conditions than Republicans (58-34 percent) and health-care voters broke for Democrats 3-to-1. The GOP sorely needs to demonstrate leadership on the issue of pre-existing conditions, not just by rejecting the ACA, but by offering a better solution.
Momentum is building among House Democrats for a more moderate alternative to single-payer health-care legislation.
The legislation, which would allow people aged 50 to 65 to buy Medicare, is being championed by Rep. Brian Higgins (D-N.Y.), who supported House Minority Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for Speaker in exchange for a commitment to work on his bill when Democrats take control of the House early next year.
Progressive Democrats are pushing for a vote on a controversial health-care bill after the party takes control of the House early next year.
But the left’s push for “Medicare for all” legislation would likely divide Democrats and pose a headache for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi(D-CA), who is poised to become Speaker in the next Congress.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), who is co-chair of the Medicare for All Caucus in the House, told supporters on an organizing call Tuesday night that simply expressing support for the idea is not enough.
Supporters say they are going to push for a vote and organize grass-roots efforts to pressure Democratic holdouts to sign on to the legislation. However, any floor vote would probably fail, with all Republicans and some Democrats rejecting the measure.
President Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services recently announced welcome new guidance to states looking to improve their health care and health insurance systems through “state innovation waivers” under Section 1332 of the ACA. The new guidance gives states significantly more flexibility to devise creative solutions to meet the health care and insurance needs of their constituents and it builds upon new community engagement waivers that made Medicaid more flexible for states earlier this year. Section 1332 allows states to experiment and creatively tailor their health care coverage programs under certain conditions.