On Friday, in one of his first actions as newly elected President of the United States of America, President Donald Trump began the first steps to his plan of repealing and replacing Obamacare, signing an executive order that essentially freezes the burden-laden mandates the law entails.
From FoxNews.com:
The requirement to buy insurance is one of the more unpopular components of the law. Trump’s order stated clearly that his policy is to seek the “prompt repeal” of the Affordable Care Act, but also said his directive to agencies in the meantime is meant to minimize the economic impact of the law.
The order stated that relevant agency heads “shall exercise all authority and discretion available to them to waive, defer, grant exemptions from, or delay the implementation of any provision or requirement of the Act that would impose a fiscal burden on any State or a cost, fee, tax, penalty, or regulatory burden on individuals, families, healthcare providers, health insurers, patients, recipients of healthcare services, purchasers of health insurance, or makers of medical devices, products, or medications.”
The language does not specifically cite the individual mandate -- which was at the center of the Supreme Court battle under the Obama administration that ultimately left the law in place -- but was seen as a potential swipe at that provision, among others.
"It's a sign that the Trump administration is looking to unwind the law in every way it can administratively," said Larry Levitt of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan clearinghouse for information and analysis about the health care system.
This is a significant first move for President Trump and his base. While the executive order is being described as something of a mission statement or blueprint to the full repeal and replace plan that is supposed to be coming out this week, this moves to solidify progress on one of many promises Trump planted the seeds of on the campaign trail. While at some points it seemed that Trump was looking to possibly negotiate with democrats on health care, even vowing “insurance for all” in an interview last week, he has ultimately decided to tear down the program.
A plan is scheduled to come out Tuesday or Wednesday, according to Senator Rand Paul, who, along with President Trump, believes the repeal and replacement should be done in the same day:
I think we should have a replacement bill same day same time simultaneously exactly the same day, and we’ve been complaining about Obamacare for six years. Certainly we can have a replacement bill on the same day. I’m putting one together. It’s in legislative language, and we’ll release it to everybody Tuesday or Wednesday of next week.
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You cannot insure against something that is already known. So if we already know that you’re dead, we can’t sell you life insurance. If we already know that you’re sick, we can’t sell you insurance against being sick. Insurance is against something that’s unknown. Now, you can take care of people and you’re going to have to take care of people, but I’ve been saying that the real sick people that already have pre-existing conditions, it’s dumb to buy them any sort of insurance, a risk pool, any of that. Putting a bunch of sick people in a pool and buying insurance doesn’t make sense. If they’re poor you take care of them through a government program like medicaid and things like that. …
What you want to do for most people is you want to have enough people able to join together to have leverage, lower prices, regardless of a pre-existing condition
With the plan supposedly scheduled to be revealed this week, we won't have to wait too long to see if this truly is the republicans' moment to finally replace the disastrous policy, or just the first sideshow in a RINO’s first order as president.
