Sure, these are just EOs, and they’re being legally challenged, but if they inject enough uncertainty into the market, the exchanges are going to empty out anyway, or so some say.
Will they? Regardless, what’s going to happen from here on out? Why didn’t Trump do this to begin with and save himself the embarrassment? Is health care still going to be a third rail, or will the taste of reform change the game for the future? If the exchanges do fall, are we back to 2008, or something different? What happens politically? After all, we know a huge number of people are going to believe the lies and omissions, but there are a huge number who won’t. Maybe that’s a wash?
It’s more than just uncertainty – health insurers have to plan on the basis that killing the subsidies for low-income earners will stand, and either raise rates and/or pull out of unprofitable markets, and it looks like they’re planning to do both.
This EO is an all-out attack on Obamacare in an attempt to kill it by eliminating its two essential features, low-income subsidies and its protections for those with pre-existing conditions. There are undoubtedly a large number of voters stupid and gullible enough that when Obamacare fails they’ll believe it was because it was a bad plan and not because it was deliberately and maliciously killed. Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi called this EO “a spiteful act of vast, pointless sabotage leveled at working families and the middle class in every corner of America”.
There’s still a good chance that the courts and Congress will act to reverse this madness and restore some sanity to the system, actions that become increasingly probable after 2018 and likely moot after 2020, if the ACA can survive the sabotage that long and nuclear holocaust doesn’t break out in the world.
I wish this were a joke. I wish there wasn’t any chance of this happening. How the fuck did anyone think it was a good idea to give the President the power of a first strike with no checks at all?
I just read where he tweeted about how we should all love him because he was sticking his thumb in the eye of the greedy health insurance giants! Is he gonna be William Jennings Bryan for Halloween?
Republicans let him down, Congress let him down, the political class let him down. He’s trying like hell to drain the swamp but for now it’s just one man battling against the system.
I don’t know, but in 2 weeks I go on Medicare, so I don’t care that much.
ObamaCare has been great! In 2016, I paid less than $1200 a year in premiums, and my total medical expenses were $193,000!!! It has been GREAT for me whilst it lasted!
