Look for skimpier insurance
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration Monday took new steps to broaden the availability of health plans that don’t have to cover patients’ pre-existing medical conditions, signaling that the federal government would support state proposals to promote more sales of these skimpier plans.
Administration officials billed the move as a way to give more choice to consumers struggling with expensive health insurance.
“Now states will have a clearer sense of how they can take the lead on making available more insurance options,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, who has championed a host of efforts to loosen regulations established through the Affordable Care Act.
But the latest administration proposal to weaken insurance standards comes as President Donald Trump and Republican congressional candidates are intensifying their bid to convince voters that the GOP backs patient protections in the 2010 law, often called Obamacare.
The new proposal from the Department of Health and Human Services and the Treasury Department would not explicitly scrap the law’s protections, which bar health plans from denying coverage to people with pre-existing medical conditions. But it would dramatically reshape rules established by the 2010 law that were designed to prevent states from weakening these protections.
“The door is now wide open for states to do an end run around the ACA by creating a parallel market with lower premiums but fewer protections for people with pre-existing conditions,” said Larry Levitt, senior vice
president at the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation, which studies health insurance markets.
Under current law, states may apply to the federal government for permission to redesign their insurance markets and keep federal health care aid as long as the redesign does not decrease the number of people with comprehensive health coverage.
The new plan would change this by supporting state proposals that could shift people out of comprehensive health plans into skimpier plans that don’t cover benefits such as drugs, mental health services and maternity care — and that can deny coverage for pre-existing medical conditions as long as a state’s residents still have access to a more comprehensive plan.
The Trump administration has already issued two regulations this year to loosen requirements on health plans.
The first makes it easier for individuals and small businesses to band together to form so-called association health plans, or AHPs, which don’t offer a full set of health benefits. The second allows consumers who buy skimpier short-term plans to keep the coverage for as long as three years, up from the current limit of three months.