Posted on 03/28/2019 8:27:59 PM PDT by Revel
A federal judge has struck down a rule letting individuals and small businesses pool together to buy health insurance, threatening a program encouraged by the Trump administration that was created as an escape hatch from high Obamacare premiums.
The ruling, issued Thursday by U.S. District Judge John Bates, a President George W. Bush appointee, came after 11 states and the District of Columbia sued saying that the rules violated Obamacare and the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, or ERISA.
Bates agreed, concluding in his opinion that the rule, issued by the Department of Labor, was "clearly an end-run around" Obamacare. He also stated the Trump administration didn't have the authority under ERISA to change the rules.
It was not immediately clear whether the administration's up-and-running alternatives, know as "association health plans," would still be allowed to operate. Bates in his ruling asked the Department of Labor to state whether any part of the rule could still stand.
The ruling is the latest blow this week to President Trump's healthcare agenda. A judge struck down Medicaid work rules earlier this week, and many Republicans have said they do not wish to come up with a replacement plan after the administration in a surprise move asked an appeals court to fully invalidate Obamacare.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
Yup... exactly.
NOTHING about any “health insurance” reform has ever once lowered the cost of health insurance or health care, just as nothing aboouyt federal aid, grants, loans to students has lowered actual total tuition, ever.
Why?
In both cases the Dims (in control of the media) have had everyone focused on the hole (insurance or how much students pay for college) and not the donut (either health care costs themselves, or the exhorbitant college tuitions). By mounting the arguments in that manner the education industrial complex and health care industrial complex have always gotten all the money they wanted, WITHOUT ANY MECHANISM (cash in the marketplace) TO GET THEIR COSTS DOWN. The “reforms” have just protected those two areas of the economy from needing to be more cost effective. Of all sectors of the economy, health care and college education have far exceeded the inflation rates of the economy in general or any other economic sector.
“Insurance costs” are not the donut, they are only the hole. Insurance costs are driven by health care costs, not insures profits. I worked for years in a non-profit multi-employer pension and inusrance outift. Our health inurance plan was self-insured - we managed it ourselves. Our costs were just the adnminstrative costs, a stop-loss insurance and the claims. We kept a reserve for catastrophic claims in a single year, so we could lower how much premiums needed to increase to account for that. Our earnings on our reserve paid our administrative expenses. So it was a well run plan that always met its claims obligations, and the benefits were pretty good as well. In the 80s and 902 when the nation was complaining about the “rising cost of health insurance” it was a smokescreen. It was not the “rising cost of health insurance. Those increases were merely adjustments for the rising cost of HEALTHCARE. Our well run not for profit self-insured plan HAD TO make premium increases that were on par with the national averages.
We need many things to be NOT “insured” coverages, but paid for out of health savings accounts and health savings accounts need to be a generous part of any monthly health insurance premium. The “insured” needs to be mostly the catastrophic stuff - surgeries & major accidents, long term high value medicines (only those above a certain amount or when the total monthly for medicine is above a certain ammount).
Hospitals and insurers should not be allowed in networks or PPOs that bind an individual as to where and where not they can get covered services. All insurers need to be accepted by all health care providers, with no behind the scenes deals between them. The only “deals” need to be between the individual and the health care providers.
When your house has damages covered by insurance your insurer does not dictate who you must use to get the repair. Your insurer assesses the issue and tells you how much your claim benefit will be, that’s it. And that is all a health care provider needs to know - how much the insurer will pay. The difference if any will be your out-of-pocket or out of your health savings account. That’s it. It should not matter that the health care provider would wish your insurer would pay more, so your balance would be less. Getting that balance lower is their job, which they can do FOR YOU, lest everything go back to the health care providers getting everything they can from the insurers and insurance premiums and healh care cosrs continue to refuse to go down.
“You need to be the Presidents Senior Adviser to writing TrumpCare.”
So, what are you waiting for. Use Twitter, to tell Trump!!! LOL
In the 80s and 902 when the nation was complaining about the rising cost of health insurance it was a smokescreen.
I digress. My mom was there when the clinton’s rolled into town. Started pushing her healthcare proposals and then watched all of that morph into HMOs, etc. She said that was pretty much the end of it.
And now, after obamacare went into effect, the drug companies, thinking that they could get their hands on all that federal money raised their drug prices through the roof.
I guess, it is now further proof that the Left/Dem’s use government to enrich themselves, their donors and their friends by forcing government regulations down our throats, for our own good, of course.
It’s no different with education. Government gets involved in the student loan business and prices start going up. obama lets the government take the whole business over and education costs sky rock.
There is plenty of anecdotal evidence, but the statistics are massive and tell the stories in hard numbers. I am talking about charts that show increases in government aid to education merely matching the increases in tuition, as if that would or will solve the problem of ever rising tuition costs. All it has done is allow the schools to not worry about their rising costs, the politcal class will frame the whole thing as “for the students” and the schools will get more taxpayer subsidies rolling in. All the wile tuition has a decades long inflation rate more than anything else.
All the programs about “we mus do more about ‘health insurance’” have done the same thing - helped feed, not stem, the higher than most things inflation rate of health care.
And who are the biggest donors to the Dims - education and health care. Bingo!!!!
Obama care is better just ask Roberts
Can we agree that they’re all (Gore, Kerry and Bush) idiots? We are talking about the George W. Bush that had nothing to say for the eight years of the Obama administration, but suddenly found his voice when Trump was elected.
Hey....it’s the governments money, right?
Industries...and higher education is an industry, feeding off the government, TAXPAYER, trough. Nothing more.
I would add to your list the abolishment of open season to buy insurance. It is ridiculous that you only get one month out of the year to buy a new plan if you do not like the one you have. Every other kind of insurance can be changed any time you want, why not health insurance?
You’re really in love with the Bushes I guess. Sorry, one doesn’t have to like the alternative to dislike and despise Bush Jr., the Village Idiot from Texas. So many things he did that were beyond ridicule and just bad. Katrina, not dealing with the real culprits of 9/11, getting us into the Iraq War, more open borders, etc. But maybe you are a Never Trumper at heart?
bookmark
Won’t matter when the entire obamacare gets declared unconstitutional, which is coming.
How dare the rubs demand freedom. They shall be oppressed!
It is way past time to put a stop to legislative judges.
almost time to water the tree of Liberty.
Sincde Obamacare is on LIFE SUPPORT & about to get the machines turned off & the plugs pulled, this would be a natural solution.
Cart ahead of the horse.
It goes deeper.
The subject matter itself is something the federal has no delegated power for. It is, to be frank, none of the federal government’s business if anyone among the general population has healthcare at all. Or if they can afford food, shelter, clothes, phones or cars. The federal government has no delegated power to address individual welfare divorced from actual employment as a federal employee at all.
Do tell when Jeb Bush appointed federal judges.
Don’t forget a judge may also decide the state needs to increase funding for public schools as well. It may be time for the state to go to the Unicorn well and pull out those rainbow dollars.
Checked out the 9th Circus Court lately?
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