{"id":17379,"date":"2017-03-12T08:58:14","date_gmt":"2017-03-12T15:58:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/moniak-healthcare-talking-points-arent-a-cure\/"},"modified":"2017-03-12T08:58:14","modified_gmt":"2017-03-12T15:58:14","slug":"moniak-healthcare-talking-points-arent-a-cure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/opinion\/moniak-healthcare-talking-points-arent-a-cure\/","title":{"rendered":"Moniak: Healthcare talking points aren\u2019t a cure"},"content":{"rendered":"

The GOP finally released its proposal to repeal and replace Obamacare. If you want to know what\u2019s in it, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) tweeted \u201c#ReadTheBill.\u201d Their American Health Care Act (AHCA) is available to download at https:\/\/housegop.leadpages.co\/healthcare\/<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Don\u2019t bother though. Because it\u2019s really a 123-page amendment to Obamacare and the Medicaid section of the Social Security Act. So, you\u2019ll have to read those too. And they don\u2019t expect anyone to do that.<\/span><\/p>\n

What Ryan\u2019s team really wants is cheerleaders to repeat their talking points.<\/span><\/p>\n

Among those is the AHCA will keep two of Obamacare\u2019s most popular patient protections. It will remain illegal for insurance companies to deny coverage, or charge more, for preexisting conditions. And young people can remain on their parents\u2019 polices until the age of 26.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not going to speculate how much those provisions contributed to the increase in insurance premiums under Obamacare. But keeping both government interventions is proof that one of their talking points is nonsense. The AHCA will not restore free market management of health care.<\/span><\/p>\n

They are right that their plan \u201cdismantles the Obamacare taxes.\u201d It\u2019s a simple statement that may be enough to satisfy the GOP\u2019s most loyal supporters. But anyone who thought Donald Trump would fight for the working class might want to ask why he\u2019s allowing the elimination of Obamacare\u2019s $500,000 tax deduction limit for executive salaries of health insurance companies.<\/span><\/p>\n

Take Aetna. They pay their CEO about $17 million a year. Allowing them to write it all off amounts to a huge windfall for a company that last year reported a net income of almost $3 billion. It was only 7 percent less in 2015. They don\u2019t need a tax cut.<\/span><\/p>\n

A photo tweeted by Trump suggests this gift was discussed in the White House the day before Trump gave his State of the Union speech. \u201cGreat meeting\u201d the caption read, \u201cwith CEO\u2019s of leading U.S. health insurance companies who provide great healthcare to the American People.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Maybe to him it was a great meeting, but his message is definitely wrong. It\u2019s America\u2019s doctors and nurses working in hospitals and clinics who provide us the health care we need. What the insurance companies do is make health care \u201can unbelievably complex subject,\u201d which is exactly how Trump described it when he spoke to state governors that same day.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another GOP talking point is they\u2019ll \u201celiminate the individual and employer mandate penalties\u201d. What they don\u2019t explain is the AHCA imposes a different kind of penalty on anyone who lets their insurance lapse for two months. They\u2019ll be subjected to a 30 percent increase in premiums when they try to get a new policy.<\/span><\/p>\n

What about allowing health insurers to compete across state lines? After all, Trump reiterated this campaign pledge in his State of the Union. But that\u2019s not part of the AHCA because the GOP is using the budget reconciliation process so Senate Democrats can\u2019t kill the bill with a filibuster. Their talking points redirect readers to an initiative titled \u201cA Better Way.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But the two short paragraphs on this subject in that report are just more talking points. One of them is they\u2019ll \u201cmake it easier for states to enter into interstate compacts,\u201d correctly implying it\u2019s already allowed by Obamacare.<\/span><\/p>\n

In any case, Obamacare, or the feds for that matter, aren\u2019t the sole problem. Regulating the insurance industry is a states\u2019 rights issue. For instance, if an insurer in Washington or Oregon wants to offer policies in Alaska, they\u2019d have conform to our rules.<\/span><\/p>\n

The bigger problem for out of state insurers, though, is building a network of doctors and hospitals in Alaska. To negotiate competitive reimbursement rates, they first need a sizable pool of insured Alaskans. And they won\u2019t have that pool without a network. It\u2019s a classic chicken before the egg question.<\/span><\/p>\n

Forbes columnist Avik Roy believes selling insurance across state lines can work. Never a fan of Obamacare, his well-informed argument ends with telling everyone to be patient. \u201cPolicymakers\u201d he wrote, \u201cshouldn\u2019t be \u2018dumbfounded\u2019 if interstate insurance doesn\u2019t produce immediate dividends.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

However, whenever money is involved, patience isn\u2019t an American virtue.<\/span><\/p>\n

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Hiltzik argues the idea will never work. He references a Georgetown University study that claims insurers, doctors and hospitals aren\u2019t interested. It\u2019s \u201conly backers\u201d he concludes, \u201care preening political candidates who don\u2019t understand health insurance.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

And because it\u2019s \u201can unbelievably complex subject,\u201d most never will understand it. That\u2019s why their talking points, and anyone who repeats them, need to be treated with an extremely heavy dose of skepticism.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The GOP finally released its proposal to repeal and replace Obamacare. If you want to know what\u2019s in it, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) tweeted \u201c#ReadTheBill.\u201d Their American Health<\/a> Care Act (AHCA) is available to download at https:\/\/housegop.leadpages.co\/healthcare\/. Don\u2019t bother though. Because it\u2019s really a 123-page amendment to Obamacare and the Medicaid section of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":8,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-17379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17379\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17379"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=17379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}