Right here in the middle of the end of the world of Fire and Fury another shoe drops on Obamacare. The Trump administration has published a proposed regulation to allow individuals to band together to purchase health insurance across state lines -- without all the mandatory Obamacare free coverage.
By the way, the difference between health insurance and government "health insurance" is that the government version always has free stuff thrown in to hook the bubbas. Hey, why not when the government is paying anyway.
Seriously, we can now do a review of the wisdom of the original Obamacare plan. It had a problem, learned from the debacle of Hillarycare. Most Americans already have health insurance and they do not appreciate being forced to pay more to subsidize people that don't yet have insurance. So the sell on Obamacare had to be that nobody was going to pay more, and there would be no serious impact on "the deficit." That meant that the Obamacare subsidies could not all appear on the federal budget; instead chaps like Jonathan Gruber had to come up with cunning plans to force the subsidies to be paid by people buying health insurance so they would pay for a good chunk of the benefits distributed to Democratic voters who were supposed to benefit from the extension of health insurance.
But since many of the Obamacare benefits were "off-budget," and even fashioned through regulations, that makes them much harder to defend, and much easier to reverse.
Clearly it is very difficult for Republican politicians to put together a straight-up repeal of Obamacare; that is what the failures of the fall of 2017 were about. It is not so difficult for Trump bureaucrats to repeal Obamacare step-by-step through the administrative state.
(Here's an interesting take. When Trumpists talk about reining in the administrative state, the mainstream media doesn't really get it. Well, of course. The issue of the administrative state is a thing in conservative think tanks and policy analysts like Charles Murray writing books like By the People. For liberals the administrative state is not a bug, it's a feature.)
But it all comes back to the liberal narrative on President Trump. If this guy is a complete idiot, and mentally ill, and colluding with Russia, and watching TV all day, how come he is able to preside over this massive roll-back of the administrative state, and figure out that, if you can't repeal Obamacare by the front door you can repeal it by the back door? How come?
It comes down to the basic question. Donald Trump is not an idiot; he merely plays one on TV.
The new regulation, which was published in the Federal Register on January 5, will be available for public comment for 60 days. When it goes into effect, it will allow small employers to band together for the purpose of buying health insurance in the large group market. Specifically, it will “allow employers to form small business health plans based on geography or industry” and permit such plans “to serve employers in a state, city, county or a multi-state metro area.” It can be used to “serve all the businesses in a particular industry nationwide,” and also allows sole proprietors to join small business health plans.Here is what a critic of the Trump policy has to say.
Currently… associations that offer coverage to small businesses or individuals have to follow ACA rules, which require coverage of 10 categories of essential benefits, and limit what factors can be considered in charging premiums. The new regulation would largely exempt association plans from these rules, allowing them to offer insurance to small businesses and sole proprietors that is cheaper but also covers less[.]Yay! If you are an individual policyholder or small businessman.
By the way, the difference between health insurance and government "health insurance" is that the government version always has free stuff thrown in to hook the bubbas. Hey, why not when the government is paying anyway.
Seriously, we can now do a review of the wisdom of the original Obamacare plan. It had a problem, learned from the debacle of Hillarycare. Most Americans already have health insurance and they do not appreciate being forced to pay more to subsidize people that don't yet have insurance. So the sell on Obamacare had to be that nobody was going to pay more, and there would be no serious impact on "the deficit." That meant that the Obamacare subsidies could not all appear on the federal budget; instead chaps like Jonathan Gruber had to come up with cunning plans to force the subsidies to be paid by people buying health insurance so they would pay for a good chunk of the benefits distributed to Democratic voters who were supposed to benefit from the extension of health insurance.
But since many of the Obamacare benefits were "off-budget," and even fashioned through regulations, that makes them much harder to defend, and much easier to reverse.
Clearly it is very difficult for Republican politicians to put together a straight-up repeal of Obamacare; that is what the failures of the fall of 2017 were about. It is not so difficult for Trump bureaucrats to repeal Obamacare step-by-step through the administrative state.
(Here's an interesting take. When Trumpists talk about reining in the administrative state, the mainstream media doesn't really get it. Well, of course. The issue of the administrative state is a thing in conservative think tanks and policy analysts like Charles Murray writing books like By the People. For liberals the administrative state is not a bug, it's a feature.)
But it all comes back to the liberal narrative on President Trump. If this guy is a complete idiot, and mentally ill, and colluding with Russia, and watching TV all day, how come he is able to preside over this massive roll-back of the administrative state, and figure out that, if you can't repeal Obamacare by the front door you can repeal it by the back door? How come?
It comes down to the basic question. Donald Trump is not an idiot; he merely plays one on TV.
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