Archive for June, 2018

Your monthly dose of health wonkery

Thursday, June 14th, 2018

Despite vacations, graduations, weddings and all the usual seasonal distractions, the Health Wonks are on the job. The June compendium of health policy news is freshly posted by long-time wonk Hank Stern at InsureBlog — and speaking of weddings, he’s posted A Midsummer Night’s Health Wonk Review. There are many great entries from the usual suspects so grab a coffee and check it out.

Bulletin: Dog Catches Bus! Now What?

Tuesday, June 12th, 2018

We’re goin’ right straight back to 2010
To start the health care war all over again!

It took time, but the GOP has finally learned a thing or two about fighting the Affordable Care Act, or, as they insist on calling it: Obamacare. You will recall that in 2017, after achieving control of all three branches of government, the party of Abraham Lincoln launched, in another Ground Hog Day moment, its biggest ever attack on the ACA, only to see its troops repulsed and annihilated once again by the turned down thumb of a war hero.

And then, after so many defeats there was a “light dawning over Marblehead” moment that would have made Prince Talleyrand proud.  In what the army calls a “triple flank,” republicans:

  1. In their humongously big 2017 tax cut law, zeroed out the penalty for not having health insurance;
  2. In February, 2018, got 20 states to sue the federal government contending that repeal of the penalty obviates the individual mandate making the entirety of the ACA unconstitutional.
  3. In May, 2018, somehow convinced the Justice Department not to defend the government in the suit.

Wow! A trifecta!

If the 20 states prevail, collateral damage abounds. First and foremost, the ACA’s provision that insurers not discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions. There are about 133 million Americans, under the age of 65, who fall into that health care Punji Pit. Prior to the ACA these family members, friends or neighbors of ours could be either denied coverage relating to their conditions, or charged exorbitant premiums. Beginning in 2014, the ACA forbade that. If the states win their suit, that meaty provision of the law, which a Kaiser tracking poll shows 70% of the population supports, gets torn up into little pieces and fed to the crows.

You might ask, “What do insurance companies think about all this?” Well, they do not like it one bit. America’s Health Insurance Plans, the trade association for health insurance companies, supports the pre-existing condition protections under the ACA. “Removing those provisions will result in renewed uncertainty in the individual market, create a patchwork of requirements in the states, cause rates to go even higher for older Americans and sicker patients, and make it challenging to introduce products and rates for 2019,” AHIP said in a statement.

So, here’s the question: If the 20 states actually win their suit, what happens then? Among many groups, the 1.25 million Americans with Type 1 diabetes who need to inject costly insulin every day to stay alive are waiting for an answer.