Governors work for bipartisan healthcare fix
As rallies and rhetoric dominated news and social media last week, two governors — one Democrat and one Republican — shared their plans for stabilizing the country’s health insurance markets. Y’all remember the big, important issue of health care, right? The campaign promises? The lack of a developed and workable plan for an alternative to the Affordable Care Act by President Trump and/or the GOP, despite years of complaints about and criticisms of “Obamacare”?
Healthcare is sitting on the back burner during the August recess, but hearings will begin after Labor Day. Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a Republican, are working on a joint plan they expect to release before the September hearings in the U.S. Senate. They also hope to get other governors from both parties on board to show support at the state level.
This is the type of initiative we need. Both Hickenlooper and Kasich agree that a one-party plan is “doomed to fail.” The ACA has been a lightening rod for criticism since its passage and Republican plans considered earlier in the year already have failed. Why can’t both parties work together on a solution? Isn’t that why they are in Washington? To work together and represent us? Surely if a couple of governors can do it, our representatives and senators can manage to engage in similar efforts.
“I’m not going to get into specifics with you until we have it all ironed out, but it’s not going to be some pie-in-the-sky, way-upthere kind of stuff,” Kasich told a Colorado affiliate of National Public Radio. “There will be things that we will address that will have specific solutions. And one of the things we’re finding out is the states do have some power to do some things unique to them, as long as these insurance markets are going to be stabilized.”
Though they were not willing to discuss specifics until all the details are worked out, they did say the ACA mandate that employers with 50 or more employees provide insurance coverage is too low. The mandate is a hiring deterrent for small businesses, they said. The governors also agree that national single-payer coverage will not be a part of their discussions.
Hickenlooper and Kasich are advocates of the Medicaid expansion and have utilized its resources in their states. Looking at the ACA, Hickenlooper said there are several important things that need to be changed, but “the probably top one on our list would be this notion of having some sort of reinsurance [using public money to help insure the sickest people] to make sure the high-cost pool is not causing higher rates for all the people seeking insurance on the private markets You use reinsurance in almost every type of insurance program to cut off those ‘hilltops’ as we say.”
I’m not sure whether unlawful use of subsidies by members of Congress is on their radar, but it should be. I follow a number of groups on social media, including Judicial Watch. It is a conservative, nonpartisan educational foundation promoting transparency, accountability and integrity in government.
Judicial Watch has asked the Trump administration to stop members of Congress and their staff from unlawfully purchasing, with taxpayer subsidies, health insurance through the District of Columbia’s small business exchange. The request was made in June to the Centers for Medicare Medicaid Services as part of a process set out by the
Department of Health and Human Services to protect the ACA.
Because certain members of Congress and congressional employees are enrolled in a small business exchange, the government is contributing money contrary to the ACA. If the language allowing this were revoked, according to Judicial Watch, “the government would save monies being expended unlawfully to provide contributions to the approximately 20,000 members of Congress and congressional employees. In addition, the rule of law will be enforced.”
“Congress, through fraud, is violating Obamacare to get taxpayers to pay for its health insurance,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a news release. “If the Trump administration required Congress to follow the law, taxpayers would be saving money, pure and simple. We hope the Trump administration will end this clear violation of law by Congress.”
The ACA has serious issues — probably more than taxpayers realize. Criticism is justified. It needs to be fixed — not repealed or replaced, not tweaked and renamed. Fixed.
Our federal officials must put aside partisan bickering and having ownership of the winning solution. They must come together and do what is in the best interests of the American people. Right now, that means stabilizing healthcare insurance markets and making healthcare affordable and available. Period. Just do the right thing for the right reasons.