Analyzing the ACA's Impact on Employers and Providers
The October 12, 2017 “Executive Order Promoting Healthcare Choice and Competition Across the United States” gets things rolling, but this ball will have to roll up hill for months before it can roll downhill. Here’s why.
The meat of this matter is in § 2 of the Order:
Sec. 2. Expanded Access to…
As you have read here, the Senate’s finest hours were not those spent in July 26, 2017 health care policy debate, which resumed July 27 at 10:00 am EDT. The bipartisan demagoguery did not diminish, but some Senators on each side rose above that fray and, in the end, Democrats won the narrowest possible victory…
Senate floor activity has made this the ACA’s biggest news week not involving Justice Roberts, but whatever news you have read, rest assured that it wasn’t really that simple. Let us preach on it.
Shortly after noon EDT on July 25, Senator McConnell announced a vote on a motion to proceed to debate the National…
The hero has disappeared in a cloud of suspicion and is presumed dead, so much so that supposed friends are found to be celebrating his passing. This is just as it should be at the end of Act II. Remember when Republicans rejoiced over the apparent abandonment of H.R. 3200 in October 2009? It furnished…
The pundits and political partisans apparently stopped reading before the heading on page 9 of the CBO’s June 26 report on the Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA) Discussion Draft, “Uncertainty Surrounding the Estimates,” which the CBO conceded to be “inherently inexact,” given the complexity of possible reactions to BCRA passage. Going further, the CBO disclosed…
Many other things being equal, the longer the sail boat, the faster it can go before its bow wave defeats further speed increase. However, as any boat approaches its “hull speed,” an increasing amount of energy is required to add each new increment of speed. And so it is with health insurance.
When all parties…
The “Discussion Draft” released June 22, 2017 by the Senate Budget Committee carries the House Bill number (H.R. 1628) of the American Health Care Act, and kills taxes like the House bill, but there are major differences, too. At 142 pages, the Discussion Draft is less than one-sixth the heft of the ACA…
In the wee hours of May 5, 2017, a state governor awoke, startled. Late on May 4, he or she had been briefed on the Patient and State Stability Fund and the Federal Invisible Risk Sharing Program described in § 132 of the American Health Care Act. The reptilian brain was working, as always,…
Here are the highlights we took (quickly) from this afternoon’s Congressional Budget Office Cost Estimate for the American Health Care Act.
The AHCA “would reduce federal deficits by $337 billion over the 2017-2026 period.”
In 2018, “14 million more people would be uninsured under the [AHCA] than under current law. Most of that increase would…
Screenplays, new business ventures and major legislation typically have problems in Act II. Hopes were raised so high in Act I. Now, things seem to drag on and on, pointlessly. Friends tell you to give up or start over and enemies . . . well.
Last week, two House committees – Energy and Commerce,…
