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Trump Signs Executive Order That Could Effectively Gut Affordable Care Act's Individual Mandate
President Trump signed an executive order late Friday giving federal agencies broad powers to unwind regulations created under the Affordable Care Act, which might include enforcement of the penalty for people who fail to carry the health insurance that the law requires of most Americans.
The executive order, signed in the Oval Office as one of the new president's first actions, directs agencies to grant relief to all constituencies affected by the sprawling 2010 health-care law: consumers, insurers, hospitals, doctors, pharmaceutical companies, states and others. It does not describe specific federal rules to be softened or lifted, but it appears to give room for agencies to eliminate an array of ACA taxes and requirements.
[...] Though the new administration's specific intentions are not yet clear, the order's breadth and early timing carry symbolic value for a president who made repealing the ACA — his predecessor's signature domestic achievement — a leading campaign promise.
[Continues...]
Congressional Budget Office: Obamacare Repeal Would Be Catastrophic
U.S. Uncut reports
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has released its official analysis of the Republican plan to repeal Obamacare, and top Republicans hate it.
The CBO based its findings[1] on H.R. 3762 (the Healthcare Freedom Reconciliation Act), which was the 2015 Affordable Care Act repeal bill that passed the House of Representatives. The nonpartisan budgetary agency determined that within one year of President Obama's signature healthcare reform law being repealed, roughly 18 million people would lose their health insurance. In following years, when the expansion of Medicaid codified into the Affordable Care Act is also eliminated, the number of uninsured Americans would climb to 27 million, then to 32 million.
Additionally, for those remaining Americans who didn't lose their health coverage from the initial repeal process, health insurance premiums would skyrocket by as much as 25 percent immediately after repeal. After Medicaid expansion is taken away, premiums costs would have gone up by roughly 50 percent. The costs continue to climb, with the CBO estimating a 100 percent increase in premium costs by 2026.
CBO analysts particularly focused on H.R. 3762's repeal of the health insurance mandate that requires all Americans to have health insurance, and the bill's elimination of subsidies for low-income families that make health insurance more affordable. The CBO found that pulling out those cornerstones of the Affordable Care Act would "destabilize"[2] the health insurance market, leading to a dramatic increase in premium costs.
[1] PDF Google cache
[2] Duplicate link in TFA.
House majority leader says no set timeline on Obamacare replacement
The republican party still has no plan to put into place as a replacement for the ACA. In fact:
Asked how soon House Republicans could unite behind a plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, McCarthy said Friday in a "CBS This Morning" interview, "I'm not going to put a set timeline on it because I want to make sure we get it right."
But McCarthy promised that an ACA substitute will be "one of the first actions we start working on."
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @06:35PM
It would totally fullfill his recent twitter promises to "cover everybody" with "lower deductibles."
But the GOP would blow their top.
It also does not fit with his nomination of Price to run Health and Human Services. It also doesn't fit with the massive tax-cuts the GOP has already started pushing through congress. You simply can't reduce revenues and maintain current coverage levels, much less expand them. The tax cuts are widely seen as a back-door way to prevent an Obamacare replacement - repeal it, de-funded it and then any replacement would also have to fight for 'increasing' taxes again to pay for it.
If you pay attention to Price, he's the one guy from the GOP who has had anything remotely close to a detailed obamacare replacement. Furthermore, before Obamacare he proposed to push it out to the states. [vox.com] If Trump de-federalizes healthcare he gets to pretend he's keeping his promises and that any problems are due to the states screwing over their people. It would be great for California which would probably go single-payer. But the parts of the country that need healthcare the most are the poor ones - the deep south, appalachia, etc. And those states would just screw the poor like they have always screwed the poor.