Health insurers quietly shape Obamacare replacement with fewer risks

[DonViejo]

Source: Reuters


25 JAN 2017 AT 12:26 ET

U.S. health insurers are making their case to Republican lawmakers over how Americans sign up for individual insurance and pushing for other changes to shape the replacement of former President Barack Obama’s national healthcare law.

The health insurers, including Independence Blue Cross and Molina Healthcare Inc, are also recommending ways to put more control over insurance in the hands of states as the federal oversight of Obamacare is dismantled. They emphasize that it is crucial to keep government subsidies for low income people.

These changes, described by executives, high level officials in the health insurance sector and lawmakers in nearly a dozen interviews with Reuters, include pushing for more strict enforcement of eligibility for these plans.

Because Republicans are just starting to work with the new Trump administration and the debate is fluid, it is not clear ultimately what changes will take hold. But some of these ideas have started to surface in early Republican legislation, such as a co-sponsored bill from Maine Senator Susan Collins that would keep subsidies.

Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/2017/01/health-insurers-quietly-shape-obamacare-replacement-with-fewer-risks/

[Trust Buster]

1. So, in other words, the insurance companies want the government money to keep rolling in without

the government having any say over regulation. A good gig if you can get it.

[Bettie]

3. And "less risk"

isn't that weasel words for stop covering preexisting conditions and care specific to women?

[susanna]

5. I believe you are spot on. Saw that too. n/t

[benld74]

2. Individual states do NOT have the manpower or the force

behind them in the manner the feds possess. Many states cannot meet their budgets year in year out. Who decides whom is covered between states, since GOP want people to live in one and get covered in another. Can of worms

[yallerdawg]

4. We could probably get a good idea what the Republican plan will look like.

Once they repeal "Obamacare."

https://www.hhs.gov/healthcare/about-the-law/read-the-law/index.html#

[dchill]

6. All of this is precisely why...

We need/needed a public option.

[lark]

7. Great idea, let the 2 devils get together and figure out how to fuck us over!

Neither one of these groups give a fuck about working class people. Yeah, insurance co's want the subsidies to continue, this way they get $$ from poor people too since the subsidies rarely cover the entire cost and never do in red non-Medicaid expanded states.