The Trump Administration Wants to Hear Your Ideas for Dismantling Obamacare

On Thursday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued a request for information, inviting the public’s recommendations on reducing what the agency called the regulatory burdens of the Affordable Care Act.

 

The Centers for Medicare Medicaid Services (CMS) Proposed Rule:

To comment, go to:  Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act: Reducing Regulatory Burdens and Improving Health Care Choices To Empower Patients

 

Proposed Rule by CMS on 06/12/2017 ID: CMS-2017-0078-0001

II. Solicitation of Comments

HHS is interested in soliciting public comments about changes to existing regulations or guidance, or other actions within HHS's authority, that could further the following goals with respect to the individual and small group health insurance markets:

1. Empowering patients and promoting consumer choice. What activities would best inform consumers and help them choose a plan that best meets their needs? Which regulations currently reduce consumer choices of how to finance their health care and health insurance needs? Choice includes the freedom to choose how to finance one's healthcare, which insurer to use, and which provider to use.

2. Stabilizing the individual, small group, and non-traditional health insurance markets. What changes would bring stability to the risk pool, promote continuous coverage, increase the number of younger and healthier consumers purchasing plans, reduce uncertainty and volatility, and encourage uninsured individuals to buy coverage?

3. Enhancing affordability. What steps can HHS take to enhance the affordability of coverage for individual consumers and small businesses?

4. Affirming the traditional regulatory authority of the States in regulating the business of health insurance. Which HHS regulations or policies have impeded or unnecessarily interfered with States' primary role in regulating the health insurance markets they know best?

“If the Trump administration wants to stabilize Obamacare, some experts say it’s obvious what to do. For starters, the administration could commit to continuing the cost-sharing payments to insurers that reduce out-of-pocket costs for lower-income consumers”, says Sara R. Collins, vice president at the Commonwealth Fund. Administration officials have actively sown uncertainty about whether they will continue these payments, without which insurers will face big losses and possibly drop out of the market.”