Trumpcare Provisions--Far From As Onerous As The Press Democrats Have Told You.

What's In The Brand New Trumpcare Bill? Here Are 7 Things You Need To Know.

Photo by FG/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images

BY:

 AARON BANDLER

MAY 4, 2017

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A new version of Trumpcare is set for a vote on Thursday. The House Republican leadership believes they have the votes needed to pass the bill.  What exactly 

is in the bill? Does it actually repeal Obamacare? (Spoiler: it doesn't.)

Here are seven things you need to know about the new Trumpcare bill.

1. It defunds Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood would no longer 

receive Medicaid funding under the bill; instead $422 million will be reallocated

 to community health centers that provide women's health services minus the 

abortions.

2. States would be allowed to opt out of Obamacare's ban on lifetime 

limits and cap on out-of-pocket costs. States have the option to do this 

under the new Trumpcare bill's provision of letting states opt-out of mandated

 essential health benefits. This has been portrayed as a move that would 

harm employer-sponsored health insurance, but these regulations imposed

 by Obamacare have increased costs: if there are no limits on health care 

spending and caps on out-of-pocket costs, that means higher costs to insurers

 that they pass off through higher premiums. Health care policy wonk Avik Roy 

explained in 2013:

These mandates have already had drastic effects on a number of colleges and universities, which offer inexpensive, defined-cap plans to their healthy, youthful students. Premiums at Lenoir-Rhyne University in Hickory, N.C., for example, rose from $245 per student in 2011-2012 to between $2,507 in 2012-2013, forcing the school to drop its coverage requirements. The University of Puget Sound paid $165 per student in 2011-2012; their rates rose to between $1,500 and $2,000 for 2012-2013.

3. The individual mandate will be repealed.

4. States have the ability to charge people with pre-existing conditions 
higher premiums. But the bill still provides protections for those with pre-existing
 conditions, as Ramesh Ponnuru explains in National Review:

States would be able to waive Obamacare rules on preexisting conditions only for people who do not maintain insurance coverage. If you are someone with one of those conditions who has gotten coverage through Obamacare (or otherwise gotten coverage), the Obamacare regulations will still apply: In no state will it be possible for an insurance company to charge you more than a person without such a condition. If you are someone who has insurance and develops one of these conditions, you too will be covered by the Obamacare regulations. Insurers will not be able to charge you extra, either, under any waiver.

And maintaining insurance coverage will be easier than it was pre-Obamacare, because people without access to Medicare, Medicaid, or employer coverage will have a tax credit to purchase insurance on the individual market.

So the only people who might be adversely affected by a waiver of the Obamacare rules — if a state applied for one — would be those who have a preexisting condition but have not used their credit to buy insurance. And even they would have to have access to a high-risk pool for the regulations to be waived.

People with preexisting conditions, then, would have a triple safety net even in a state that took maximum use of the waivers: Tax credits, regulatory protection contingent on continuous coverage, and high-risk pools would all benefit them.

An amendment that pays people not to buy insurance if they're healthy was
 also introduced to woo over moderate-to-liberal Republicans. While that would
 offer more protection toward those with pre-existing conditions, it would only
 exacerbate the death spiral.

5. Medicaid expansion would end by 2020. Medicaid would then be
block-granted to the states on a per capita basis. While block-granting
Medicaid is a crucial move to bring down healthcare costs, the
fact that the Medicaid expansion will remain in place until 2020 will cause
a bull run of people who are eligible for the program to sign up before
 the expansion freezes in 2020, which would further bankrupt the system. 

6. Older enrollees can be charged five times as much as younger
 enrollees. This is a holdover from the March iteration of Trumpcare;
 Erick Erickson noted at the time that the provision "will price a large
number of seniors out of the insurance market."

7. Congress will be exempt from Trumpcare. A bill has been proposed
 to fix this, but it remains to be seen if the House will pass it or not.

Read more about the bill from Ben Shapiro here.

H/T: USA Today

So Much For The BallyHoo On ObamaCrapCare. Most Newly Insured Are On Medicaid!

Politics: Just about everyone newly insured under ObamaCare is on Medicaid

Image Credit:

Published by: Dan Calabrese on Wednesday October 22nd, 2014

Welfare state.

We all know about the problems ObamaCare has caused - people losing their coverage after being promised they wouldn't, premiums soaring, networks narrowing, prescriptions no longer covered, ER waits expanding, doctors leaving the profession, the web site crashing - yeah, you know all that, but, the Democrats hasten to add, it's all worth it because so many more people are now covered!

Even if a whole bunch of newly insured people justified this fiasco, which it wouldn't, the Democrats have a huge problem with that claim. It's not true. The Heritage Foundation's fantastic Daily Signal has a piece this morningthat demonstrates what many of us long suspected: Just about all the growth in the number of those insured has come from the expansion of state Medicaid programs under ObamaCare. The change in those who have private insurance is mostly a wash:

Our analysis of the data is reported in more detail in our latest paper, but our key findings are that in the first half of 2014:

• Enrollment in individual-market plans (both on and off the exchanges) increased by 6,254,564 individuals.

• Enrollment in private employer-sponsored group plans declined by 3,788,978 individuals.

• In the states implementing the Obamacare Medicaid expansion, enrollment in Medicaid grew by 5,716,977 individuals.

• In the states not implementing the Obamacare Medicaid expansion, enrollment in Medicaid grew by 355,674 individuals.

Applying a little arithmetic to those four key data points yields the following observations:

1. The drop in employment-based coverage offset 61 percent of the gains in individual-market coverage, for a net increase in private-sector coverage of 2,465,586 individuals.
2. Total Medicaid enrollment increased by 6,072,651 individuals, with 94 percent of that growth occurring in the states that adopted the Obamacare Medicaid expansion.
3. The total, net increase in health insurance coverage (private-market and Medicaid combined) during the first half of 2014 was 8,538,237 individuals, but 71 percent of that coverage gain was attributable to Obamacare expanding Medicaid to able-bodied, working-age adults.

It's not as if there was no growth at all in the number privately insured, but it pales in comparison to those who simply hopped onto the welfare rolls. And keep in mind that the federal government is only going to cover the states' costs on this for the first three years, after which the share picked up by the feds declines - not that there's that much difference for the taxpayers, who pay for it regardless.

But there's a bigger picture to consider here. The Democrats' rationale for government health care has always been that something like 47 million people were uninsured, and this was just an unacceptable state of affairs. Everyone needed to be covered, and the private market simply wasn't making that happen so government had to step in!

If all they were able to do was add 8.5 million to the rolls (and that's counting those who haven't paid their premiums and will eventually be lopped off), and they had to scratch and claw to do it, what does that say about the premise that 47 million people were just dying to get health insurance if only they could afford it?

It says it was a load of crap, that's what. Even the expansion of Medicaid, which is nearly free health insurance, was only able to attract 6 million people. You're still looking at nearly 40 million uninsured and apparently not the slightest bit interested in what ObamaCare has to offer. So we got all this disruption of the health care system, for . . . that?

Not too impressive any way you look at it. The unintended consequences were massive and disruptive, and even the progress that was made toward the stated goal was miniscule. Nice job, Democrats. you ruined American health care for basically nothing. Have fun on Election Day.