Business leaders discuss health care law challenges

She’s a senior correspondent for Kaiser Health News.

The Affordable Care Act requires that all insurance policies sold on the insurance exchanges cover ten categories of care.

Several business groups, including the National Retail Federation and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, support the bill, hoping that it will encourage more small businesses to offer their employees coverage.

MARY AGNES CAREY: Thanks for having me. The cost won’t just be the loss of a bill no one much liked in the first place, but quite possibly, the opportunity to do a better health-care reform down the road.

In a new analysis of the House bill that was released Thursday, the Congressional Budget Office predicted 9 million people would fall off Medicaid rolls by 2020 and 14 million by 2026. Some people are on Medicare. “Doing big things is hard”.

They wanted to hasten that tax cut, halving the original plan’s deficit reductions. President Donald Trump has called the mandate that prevented insurance companies from denying coverage to anyone with pre-existing conditions a “disaster”.

Now with ACA potentially to remain the law of the land for some time yet, the White House might want to pivot towards prescription drug pricing more quickly to rebound from a major defeat.

“Obamacare is failing the American people and I deeply appreciate the efforts of the speaker and the president to keep our promise to repeal and replace it, “McConnell said“.

The president said that the law remains “totally the property of the Democrats” and that “when people get a 200 percent increase next year or a 100 percent or 70 percent, that’s their fault”.

CAREY: Premiums, exactly. Premiums have been climbing.

Unfortunately, too many families are still paying higher premiums and out-of-pocket costs today because of anti-competitive practices that health insurance giants are allowed to engage in under the law. Those things have been adding up.

But top congressional Republicans mostly conceded the measure’s demise meant it was time to move onto other issues. During the campaign, he often ran as much against his own party as against the Democrats; if Republicans in Congress have an embarrassing failure, Trump can just say “That’s those guys over there, the bad politicians who don’t care about getting things done”. But ultimately, this all kind of comes down to a choice. It represented the culmination of seven years of unsuccessful GOP attempts to craft a replacement bill the party could rally behind – a unity that ended up eluding them. So the thought is looking at 2018, what will happen? So association health plans would likely appeal to employers with younger, healthier workers who would qualify for lower rates and be less troubled by skimpier coverage.

Insurer opposition to the tax was one of the main reasons why the insurance industry chose not to support the ACA when it was approved in 2010.

Under the current health law, an insurer is allowed to charge a 64-year-old consumer a premium that’s three times what it charges a 21-year-old. So the point that you noted – what the administration has done has said that if you don’t check that you had health insurance on your tax return, that will no longer be a problem going forward.

Perhaps they also chuckled when they heard that Sen.

But here’s the takeaway for me.

Favors pro-active health care, including mental illness, and it “would be a great shame if in any insurance reform diminishes or takes away existing health benefits”. You could go to the emergency room and find out, for example, you have Type 1 diabetes, right?

Obama’s statute has spread coverage to 20 million people and required insurers to cover numerous services and barred them from refusing policies to the very sick. The result is a bill that can’t even seem to do what it was designed for: get enough votes to pass Congress and give everyone a win. “We implore Congress to instead craft a bill that will improve Medicaid access, quality, efficiency, and sustainability, and we are happy to work with you on such a framework”. Were they actually talking about being afraid of losing them?

“It’s so cartoonishly malicious that I can picture someone twirling their mustache as they drafted it in their secret Capitol lair last night”, said Rep Jim McGovern, a Democrat from MA.