With Election Day lower than two weeks away, the Trump administration tried to pivot away from Democrats’ assaults that they’re out to dismantle medical insurance protections for individuals with preexisting circumstances.
The administration made three well being care strikes over the course of the week, together with addressing excessive costs paid by the Medicare program for medicine administered in docs’ workplaces and outpatient amenities.
Officials additionally launched a proposed regulation that would strengthen the person insurance coverage market — by making it simpler for employers to offer staff with funds to allow them to buy their very own medical insurance. But the third motion of the week might make the person market extra unstable — by offering a route for permitting states to make use of federal subsidies to let more healthy people buy much less complete protection.
This week’s panelists for KHN’s “What the Health?” are Julie Rovner of Kaiser Health News, Anna Edney of Bloomberg News, Kimberly Leonard of the Washington Examiner and Alice Ollstein of Politico.
Among the takeaways from this week’s podcast:
The administration’s newest salvo within the battle in opposition to excessive drug costs offers with Medicare Part B medicine, that are these often given for critical ailments like most cancers or arthritis and are administered in a physician’s workplace or outpatient facility as a result of they contain injections or infusions. The Medicare pricing for Plan B medicine typically has been criticized for driving up prices. Medicare reimburses docs for the prices they incur, plus 6 p.c. Critics counsel that proportion encourages docs to pay a excessive value for his or her medicine and that a flat administrative price could be much less inflationary. Despite a raft of statements in latest weeks by Republicans — together with President Donald Trump — that they help defending insurance coverage protection for individuals with preexisting medical issues, few GOP candidates have articulated any measures that might successfully do this. Guidance introduced by the administration this week to permit states to hunt waivers for his or her ACA insurance coverage marketplaces would upend a few of the “guardrails” designed to be sure that all plans present a set group of advantages, together with preexisting situation ensures. Another proposed coverage introduced this week would enable employers to start to decouple insurance coverage from the job by giving staff tax-free cash to purchase insurance policies on the ACA marketplaces.
Plus, for additional credit score, the panelists suggest their favourite well being tales of the week they assume you must learn, too:
Julie Rovner: Politico’s “HHS Reviews Refugee Operations As Trump Calls for Border Crackdown,” by Dan Diamond
and:
Rolling Stone’s “The Health Department’s Christian Crusade,” by Tessa Stuart
Kimberly Leonard: Reason.com’s “Trump’s Misleading Statement on Obamacare Is a Sign That Republicans Have No Idea How to Talk About Health Policy,” by Peter Suderman
Anna Edney: The New York Times’ “Miscarrying at Work: The Physical Toll of Pregnancy Discrimination,” by Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Natalie Kitroeff
Alice Ollstein: Kaiser Family Foundation’s “50-State Survey Finds Flat Medicaid Enrollment Tied to a Stronger Economy and New Eligibility Systems”
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Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a nationwide well being coverage information service. It is an editorially impartial program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which isn’t affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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