Senator Orrin Hatch will be trudging to the White House to deliver some bad news: despite all of the desperate Tweeting by the malevolent imbecile occupying the Oval Office, there will be no further attempt by the Republican Party to gut Health Care Coverage for the American people—at least for this year, and probably for the foreseeable future.
WASHINGTON • U.S. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch said on Monday that senators for now are too divided to keep working on health care overhaul legislation and that he and other senior Republicans will take that message to the White House.
In other words, this charade has gone on long enough. According to Hatch there are bigger fish to fry, like giving even larger tax cuts to Billionaires and corporations so they can continue to profit massively while avoiding paying American workers decent wages. Now that’s something even the so-called moderates in the Republican Party can sink their teeth into:
Hatch said he had not given up on health care. "I think we ought to acknowledge that we can come back to health care afterwards but we need to move ahead on tax reform," Hatch said.
Jonathan Chait in NYMag says this really may be, really truly is, the final nail in the coffin for those who were intent on repealing the Affordable Care Act:
Hatch’s statement makes clear what seemed obvious: Many Republican Senators, even those willing to go along with McConnell’s plan to delay the failure of Obamacare, didn’t think it would result in success anyway. It means McConnell isn’t just one vote short. Roy Blunt, a member of McConnell’s leadership team, said today, “If the question is do I think we should stay on health care until we get it done, I think it’s time to move on to something else.”
And yes, The Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) is going to hang around. According to Chait:
You might recall a great deal of news coverage focusing on the exit of insurers from a number of counties, leaving huge numbers of Americans with no choices at all on the exchanges. Today, Ohio announced that it had found insurers for 19 of its 20 counties lacking any plans, and believed the 20th is on the way.
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That leaves just some rural swaths of Nevada and Indiana — which between them contain one-tenth of one percent of all exchange enrollees — without an insurance plan in their exchanges. With the threat of legislative repeal buried, insurer participation is likely to stabilize.
President Trump claims that Obamacare is “dead” and “gone,” and has ramped up his angry threats to sabotage the exchanges. But insurers have come to a different conclusion: The president’s bluster will blow over, and Obamacare will remain.
It also looks like Republicans intend to throw a bucket of cold water on Trump’s plans to sabotage the ACA, again, at least for the time being:
Hatch said lawmakers would need to appropriate the cost-sharing subsidy payments that the administration has been making. Trump has threatened to cut off these subsidies, which help insurers keep deductibles down for low-income people who get health insurance through the Obamacare exchanges.
"I'm for helping the poor, always have been. And I don't think they should be bereft of health care," Hatch said.
What a swell guy.
As for Trump’s threats? Ian Millhiser from Think Progress has an interesting take. He says that if they are carried out it may perversely result in more people getting their health care for free or next to nothing:
The reason why involves a fairly complicated formula governing how most Obamacare exchange customers pay for their health plans, and Trump’s apparent unfamiliarity with how that formula operates.
The explanation for this is complex, but it relates to the fact that “Obamacare” is divided into four separate plans—the “Bronze,” “Gold,” “Silver” and “Platinum” Plans, depending on how much coverage they provide. The size of the government subsidy available is tied to the second-cheapest “Silver” plan available in each individual state’s market. But those subsidies can only be altered by an Act Of Congress, which Hatch has just signaled he is not about to do. The Cost-Sharing Reduction subsidy—the one Trump is threatening-- is a different animal altogether, intended to compensate insurance companies for deductible and co-payment reductions. So yes, if Trump maliciously cuts these that will adversely affect insurance companies’ bottom lines.
But CSR’s are only available under “Silver” Plans. And that’s important:
Now here’s the part where things get weird. Recall that the value of the tax credits paid out to help people afford their premiums are tied to the cost of the second-least expensive silver plan — so those tax credits gain value as silver-level premiums rise.
So even as premiums in the bronze, gold, and platinum markets stay more or less the same, the amount the government will pay to help cover those premiums will spike in a world without CSR. The result... is that many people will be able to obtain bronze plans for no cost at all — or, alternatively, they will be able to purchase much more generous gold plans for barely more than the cost of a silver plan.
So while people of higher means will indeed have to pay more for their premiums if Trump carries out his threat, lower-income people will reap a windfall, according to Millhiser’s analysis.
And if that makes your head hurt, at least you can be confident that Donald Trump has never even considered it.