By Grace-Marie Turner & Doug Badger — A few states have found a key to undoing some of Obamacare’s damage to their individual health insurance markets by redirecting some federal funding to help sick people. These states are providing separate assistance to those with the highest health costs, thereby reducing premiums and increasing enrollment for healthy...
by Doug Badger & Edmund Haislmaier— Obamacare’s rigid and centralized federal regulation of the nongroup market is failing. Premiums have risen, choices have contracted, and enrollment in individual policies continues to fall. Section 1332 of the Obamacare statute provides states with very limited authority to escape Obamacare’s mandates and test new approaches to undoing some...
by Grace-Marie Turner — The Centers for Medicaid & Medicare Services is continuing the drumbeat of modernizing the two gargantuan programs it runs to generate more accountability, greater transparency, and provide better value for both patients and taxpayers. Administrator Seema Verma announced on Thursday a new proposed rule that would bring more accountability into...
by Doug Badger — It turns out sabotage might be overrated. A new study by the Center for American Progress argues Congress’s repeal of the individual mandate and a proposed Trump administration rule that would expand the sale and renewal of short-term policies will have a devastating effect on 2019 premiums. These acts of “sabotage”...
Congressional Republicans, who ran against Obamacare through four election cycles, have spent most of the past year running away from it. But they are finding the law hard to escape. Democrats who once shied away from Obamacare now can’t stop talking about it. They are blaming Republicans for the next round of premium increases...
Health reform lives. A group of policy wonks has been working since last fall to develop the next generation of patient-centered health policy recommendations that they unveiled at a rollout event at the Hoover Institution in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. The plan, called the Health Care Choices Proposal, takes a federalist approach in moving...