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October 15, 2017. Rev. Dr. William Barber just told AM JOY that in his view the Values Voter Summit is the type of right-leaning entity that cannot continue to be called Christian.
Rev. Dr. William Barber just told AM JOY that in his view the Values Voter Summit is the type of right-leaning entity that cannot continue to be called Christian. Leave your thoughts on his explosive commentary below.
Posted by AM Joy on MSNBC on Saturday, October 14, 2017
By Jonathan Easley October 15, 2017
President Trump is expanding the culture wars, launching new attacks against institutions that he views as liberal, elitist or both.
With his agenda stalled in Congress and his poll numbers sagging, Trump has kept his base engaged and the left inflamed by escalating feuds with key figures in sports, entertainment, tech and media, effectively dragging politics into every corner of public life.
Trump’s aim is straightforward: To convince voters that there is a privileged class that scoffs at their patriotism and cares more about political correctness and diversity than ordinary Americans, their traditions and their economic plight.
The president’s allies say he’s guided in this fight by the same instincts that got him elected. Trump’s relentless attacks, they say, cut to the heart of Trump’s appeal.
“The reality is that, to the average American voter, esoteric policy is not very digestible,” said Sam Nunberg, a former Trump aide. “But culture is policy and the president understands that.”
Democrats argue that the president is doing lasting damage to the country by needlessly stoking divisions at a time of extreme political polarization. They believe time is on their side as older, white voters give way to a more diverse and socially liberal electorate as millennials come of age.
“If he is scoring political points off these culture war issues in the short run, it’s only with a base that is now starting to crack,” said David Brock, a top Democratic operative. “Exploiting these divisions is both wrong and, in the longer run, a losing proposition politically given that the broader electorate is more tolerant and diverse.”
Past presidents have similarly stoked cultural divisions. Former President Obama waded into high-profile police brutality cases and once complained about people who “cling to guns or religion.” Former President George W. Bush leveraged anti-gay marriage sentiment among evangelical voters to boost turnout on his way to reelection in 2004.
But Trump’s culture wars differ from his predecessors in both their ferocity and frequency.
The president stirs the pot on a near-daily basis at rallies, from the Oval Office and over Twitter, attracting accusations from his critics that he’s obsessed with winning empty fights with celebrities because he’s been unable to achieve meaningful legislative reforms.
And the unabashed ferocity with which Trump has gone after his targets is evidence to his critics that he doesn’t care if he alienates or annoys large numbers of Americans, as long as his base sticks by him.
Over the past week alone, Trump and his allies have kept the fires burning with fights against the NFL, ESPN, Facebook, late-night comedians and the news media, provoking retaliatory remarks from athletes, anchors, rappers and comics.
Following Trump’s lead on the issue, Vice President Pence staged a walkout at an Indianapolis Colts football game because players kneeled in protest during the national anthem.
Some in the media credited Trump with a culture wars victory when, days later, NFL chief Roger Goodell said in a memo to players that he believes they should stand.
Trump took a victory lap on Twitter, but the NFL quickly pushed back on the president’s claim that the commissioner had demanded players stand for the anthem.
Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shahid Khan, a top Trump donor and supporter during the 2016 election, accused Trump of muddying the issue and called him a “divider.”
NFL players initially began kneeling for the national anthem out of protest of racial injustices and police brutality, but Trump has effectively turned the debate into one about patriotism and respect for the country and the troops.
While polls show the public does not approve of Trump’s handling of the issue, most agree that players should stand during the national anthem.
The NFL has seen its ratings decline as the controversy has grown. But the sports league is only one of several weakened or unpopular cultural institutions that Trump has recently targeted for attack.
Trump has reignited his feud with ESPN, which had already seen a ratings decline as consumers cut the cord, after the network suspended anchor Jemele Hill, an African-American woman who had called Trump a white supremacist.
Trump called Hill out by name to his 40 million Twitter followers, saying that she’s the reason ESPN’s ratings have “tanked.”
That came during a week of escalating and increasingly specific threats against the news media, an industry that polls dismally. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that it’s “disgusting” that the press gets to write whatever it wants. The president also threatened to pull NBC News’s broadcasting license for publishing a story he claimed was false.
On Friday, Trump again dived headlong into the culture wars at the Values Voter Summit, a yearly gathering of Christian conservatives in Washington, D.C. There, he accused “politically correct” liberals of waging a war against American traditions, like the celebration of Christmas.
“We’re saying Merry Christmas again,” Trump said.
Now, Trump has Facebook in his crosshairs, accusing the social media giant of being biased against him. Facebook is in the midst of a massive public relations crisis and has attracted the ire of lawmakers and liberals alike over allegations that Russians used it as a tool during the election to spread fake news and negative ads about Hillary Clinton.
Tired of being mocked on late-night comedy shows, Trump has demanded equal airtime from “unfunny” comics. And Trump’s sons have accused hosts like Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert of burying the exploding sexual assault scandal around Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, a major Democratic donor.
To many on the left, Trump’s culture war instincts stem from his vanity and the effort to ensure that his core supporters stay energized.
“Somewhere along the line the president recognized that he only wants to be popular with his base,” said Sam Fulwood III, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and a columnist for ThinkProgress. “He’s notoriously thin-skinned and egotistical and knows his supporters will stomp and go crazy when they hear things like this. I don’t know that it’s a win for him in the real world, but in Trump World I guess it’s a win.”
But some Democrats are wary of a president who has successfully capitalized before on liberal and media blind spots.
They say they’re not underestimating Trump’s ability to turn hot-button social issues into political gains, even as the president struggles with a historically low approval rating and Washington Republicans express frustration over the never-ending controversies and distractions.
“I’m not one to attribute some grand strategic design to Trump or [former White House chief strategist Stephen] Bannon and I don’t assume they know more than we do, but a little bit of humility is warranted on the left and by the political establishment,” said Gara LaMarche, the president of the Democracy Alliance, a leading network of liberal donors.
“At every point we thought Trump couldn’t win this election and he did. You would’ve lost a lot of money betting against Trump’s instincts in that respect. I think in general his views are held by only a minority in American society but he’s good at controlling the conversation. By design or by instinct, it’s possible he’s resonating more than we think.”
Jonathan Cohn, HuffPost October 14, 2017
That was the conclusion many health care industry officials and analysts had reached by week’s end, following a pair of blows that President Donald Trump delivered to the Affordable Care Act ― and, indirectly, to the millions of people who buy private health insurance on their own.
The first blow came on Thursday, in the form of an executive order designed to undermine the new rules that “Obamacare” has placed on insurers. The 2010 health care law famously prohibits carriers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. It also requires that all plans cover a set of “essential” health benefits including mental health and maternity care.
With the executive order, Trump instructed three federal agencies to carve out some exceptions to those rules. The result could be a parallel market full of plans that don’t have all of the essential benefits and, in some cases, that are available to people only in relatively good health.
At an Oval Office ceremony to sign the order, Trump boasted that the new plans would offer cheap alternatives to the millions of consumers struggling with high premiums today. And that is true. But, as experts have warned, anybody buying one of these plans would be rolling the dice, because the plans wouldn’t necessarily cover the costs of a serious injury or medical problem. At the same time, these skimpy plans would draw the youngest and healthy customers away from the comprehensive policies, making it ever more difficult for insurers to sustain those plans financially.
But Thursday’s order turned out to be a prelude to something bigger. Literally hours after the president signed it, the administration announced that it was carrying out a threat Trump had made for months. The federal government would be cutting off a set of monthly payments to health insurers operating through HealthCare.gov or one of the state-run marketplaces. The change was effective immediately, the administration later confirmed, meaning the payments that these insurers got in September could turn out to be their last.
This is not how the architects of the Affordable Care had intended the program to work. The law promises these payments to insurers, so that insurers can, in turn, reduce deductibles and copayments for some of their lowest income customers. (The payments are thus not a “bailout,” though Trump describes them that way.) But Congress never formally appropriated the money, creating a legal dispute that is still winding its way through the courts ― and leaving payment, in the interim, to the discretion of the president.
Former President Barack Obama had kept the payments going, which, perhaps, makes it surprising that Trump waited nine whole months to stop them. Advisers warned him against taking this steps, according to a Washington Post report, but in the end they couldn’t stop him ― perhaps because Trump has become so frustrated with his party’s failure to get repeal legislation through Congress.
“This is confirmation that the Trump administration has no interest in making anything on the individual market work,” David Anderson, research associate at Duke University’s Margolis Center for Health Policy, said on Friday.
Once Trump pulled the trigger, a frenzy of crisscrossing emails and phone calls ensued, as industry officials, analysts, and public officials (and, yes, journalists too) tried to figure out exactly what would happen next. Even now nobody seems quite certain of the answers, although at the moment it looks like most insurers had already prepared for the possibility Trump would cut off those payments.
Either on their own or at the behest of their regulators, those insurers filed rates for 2018 assuming the insurer payments might stop. And in the states where insurers expected the payments to continue ― Sean Mullin, senior director at Leavitt Partners, told HuffPost he thinks it’s about a dozen total ― insurers and regulators are now hastily making plans for last-minute revisions.
Whether insurers made the plans previously or whether they are making them now, the gist of the response is the same: The carriers are raising premiums to make up for the money they’re no longer getting from Washington ― and to account for any other steps the Trump administration might take to depress enrollment or otherwise weaken the program. Charles Gaba, the Michigan-based data nerd who runs the well-respected website ACAsignsups.net, has estimated that insurer anxiety over Trump’s management account for about two-thirds of next year’s premium increases.
It raises doubts about whether you want to partner with the federal government going forward Chet Burrell, CEO of CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield
Gaba’s conclusion is consistent with what insurers have reported individually. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Montana, for example, is requesting an average increase of 23.1 percent for its individual health plans next year, company spokesman John Doran told HuffPost on Friday. About three-quarters of that, he said, represented uncertainty over the Trump cutoff.
As usual, the majority of people who buy coverage through HealthCare.gov or one of the state exchanges won’t feel the impact of these increases, at least not right away. That’s because the Affordable Care Act uses tax credits to put a ceiling on premiums for consumers with incomes below 400 percent of the poverty line, or $98,400 for a family of four. No matter how high premiums go, they won’t pay more. Some insurers have gone a step farther, and structured their premium increase for next year in ways that shield even wealthier people from the impact of the cuts.
Because of the formula the federal government uses to calculate financial assistance, some people will be able to get better plans for less money. Of course, the federal government will be picking up the extra costs, which is one of the many ironies of Trump’s action Thursday: The likely result will be more government spending, not less.
But some upper-income consumers are going to pay more ― in some cases, a lot more. It so happens that these are also the people who frequently struggle the most with premiums today, because their incomes are just a little too high to qualify for the tax credits, but they don’t have money to spare and are basically paying one-fifth of their income on health insurance premiums.
Presumably some of them will simply stop getting insurance altogether, and presumably it will be people who feel like they can take that risk because of their relatively good health ― thereby making the system’s risk pool problems, already pretty severe in some parts of the country, even worse.
By itself, that won’t cause health insurance markets to implode. Implementation of Thursday’s executive order won’t have that effect either. But this week’s actions are merely the latest steps in a campaign to undermine the Affordable Care Act that began on literally the first day of the Trump presidency, when he made a big show of signing a symbolic executive order instructing agencies to “waive, defer, grant exemptions from, or delay the implementation” of the law’s rules and regulations.
Since that time Trump has slashed the program’s advertising budget, cut funding for so-called navigators who help people enroll, used government funding to finance anti-Obamacare propaganda, announced unexpected downtime for HealthCare.gov, and delayed a planned step-up in enforcement of the individual mandate.
On a conference call Friday, Chet Burrell, president and CEO of CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield, noted the cumulative impact of these steps ― not just on enrollment, which the Affordable Care Act needs to survive, but also on the psyche of insurer companies like his, which is among the dominant carriers in Maryland and Virginia.
The Affordable Care Act has been a fragile program from the beginning, Burrell noted, and it has serious flaws that still need fixing. But the program has also insured millions, he explained, and it has the opportunity to strengthen with support from Washington ― only now that support is gone. “We’re worried,” he said. “It raises doubts about whether you want to partner with the federal government going forward.”
Maryland is among the states where carriers are hurriedly preparing new rate requests, because they had assumed insurer payments would keep flowing. Burrell said he was working closely with state and federal officials and was optimistic they would find a way to get it done, although he said there’s already talk of pushing back Maryland’s open enrollment, now scheduled to start on Nov. 1, by at least a few days to give it a bit more time.
Around the country, insurers were expressing similar sentiments ― to stick with the program, at least through this year and most likely next as well, even though the cutoff of those funds means some serious financial losses for some of them. That commitment to stay with the program is no small thing, because their contracts would appear to allow them to withdraw if the federal government pulls back on planned payments.
But the issue is really more about what happens after next year. Insurers will have to begin planning for 2019 this coming spring and, after what is likely to be a rocky open enrollment period, the decision whether to participate could be a difficult one.
The insurers who stuck it out this long, despite all of the Affordable Care Act’s problems, did so in part because they knew they were dealing with president committed to making the program work. Today they are dealing with a president bent on making it fail ― in many cases, by seeking out the weakest parts of its edifice and attaching a stick of dynamite.
Of course, Trump continues to promise that once Obamacare is gone the American people will be better off ― that they will have “great, great” health care, as he put it once again this week. Burrell, in his conference call, was among the many leaders working in health care who have come to the opposite conclusion. “If you wanted to have a great health plan for the American people,” he said, “you wouldn’t be doing this.”
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article said that insurers will have to begin planning for 2018 in the spring. They will be planning for 2019.
By Frank Di Prima October 12, 2017
Donald J. Trump as Many Imagine Him in Class at Wharton on the Rare Occasions that He Attended Class
Late Professor William T. Kelley taught Marketing at Wharton School of Business and Finance, University of Pennsylvania, for 31 years, ending with his retirement in 1982. Dr. Kelley, who also had vast experience as a business consultant, was the author of a then-widely used textbook called Marketing Intelligence — The Management of Marketing Information (originally published by P. Staples, London, 1968). Dr. Kelley taught marketing management to both undergraduate and graduate students at Wharton. www.upenn.edu/… Dr. Bill was one of my closest friends for 47 years when we lost him at 94 about six years ago. Bill would have been 100 this year.
Donald J. Trump was an undergraduate student at Wharton for the latter two of his college years, having been graduated in 1968. www.thedp.com/…
Professor Kelley told me 100 times over three decades that “Donald Trump was the dumbest goddam student I ever had.” I remember his emphasis and inflection — it went like this — “Donald Trump was the dumbest goddam student I ever had.” Dr. Kelley told me this after Trump had become a celebrity but long before he was considered a political figure. Dr. Kelley often referred to Trump’s arrogance when he told of this — that Trump came to Wharton thinking he already knew everything.
This has relevance now because as recently as this week, President Trump has challenged the Secretary of State of the United States to an I.Q. contest. www.washingtonpost.com/… This came within two days after NBC reported that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called the President a “moron” www.nbcnews.com/… or a “fucking moron” www.slate.com/… The President has frequently bragged that he was a great student at a great school (Wharton). time.com/… Thus, the public is entitled to a contrary view from somebody who was there (Dr. Kelley), and I faithfully report it here.
Bill Kelley was one smart cookie. His text book cited above — published in the late 1960s — was standard in his time in the then-new field of “marketing intelligence” and the necessity of using computers and data bases to manage it. See onlinelibrary.wiley.com/… which credits Bill for coining the quoted phrase.
Dr. Kelley’s view seems to be shared by other University of Pennsylvanians. Please see www.thedp.com/…, from the Daily Pennsylvanian, stating:
Another biographer, Gwenda Blair, wrote in 2001 that Trump was admitted to Wharton on a special favor from a “friendly” admissions officer. The officer had known Trump’s older brother, Freddy.
Trump’s classmates doubt that the real estate mogul was an academic powerhouse.
“He was not in any kind of leadership. I certainly doubt he was the smartest guy in the class,” said Steve Perelman, a 1968 Wharton classmate and a former Daily Pennsylvanian news editor.
Some classmates speculated that Trump skipped class, others that he commuted to New York on weekends. . . .
1968 Wharton graduate Louis Calomaris recalled that “Don … was loath to really study much.”
Calomaris said Trump would come to study groups unprepared and did not “seem to care about being prepared.”
Thanks and R.I.P., Bill Kelley! The words ring in my ears: “Donald Trump was the dumbest goddam student I ever had.”
Harriet Sinclair, Newsweek October 14, 2017
President Donald Trump is obsessed with his predecessor, according to a number of pundits who believe many of the Republican’s policies are all about “blowing the former president’s legacy.”
Speaking on his CNN show on Saturday, following Trump’s attempt to roll back the Iran deal, Don Lemon asked the question: “Does President Trump have an Obama obsession?” and suggesting the Republican was “making it his mission to undo every last bit of the Obama legacy.”
Political analyst David Gergen told Lemon he believed the recent announcement on the Iran deal, as well as Trump killing Obamacare subsidies, was “more about blowing up the former president’s legacy than anybody wants to admit.”
“Anything which has the name Obama on it automatically becomes a target for Donald Trump and he’s trying to reverse as much of that as possible,” he added, warning that the tendency of presidents to reverse domestic policy set by their predecessors was now rolling into foreign policy.
Indeed, back in August, a European diplomat reportedly told BuzzFeed anonymously that in his dealings with President Trump, he had noticed the Republican was driven more by a desire to scrap Obama’s policies than to enact his own.
“It’s his only real position,” the diplomat told BuzzFeed. “He will ask: ‘Did Obama approve this?’ And if the answer is affirmative, he will say: ‘We don’t.’ He won’t even want to listen to the arguments or have a debate. He is obsessed with Obama.”
Also over the summer, Trump previously shared a poll that showed he was “a better president of the United States than Barack Obama,” with the unverified results of the poll showing 61% of responders believed Trump was a better president and just 31% backing Obama.
In addition, his actual policy aims, which include his campaign pledge to repeal and replace Obamacare, but also the Iran deal, Trump’s attempt to scrap the Obama-era DACA program, and repeal of federal legislation allowing transgender students to use the bathroom of the gender they identify with, suggest the president may have an eye on targeting Obama’s policies specifically.
Indeed, Obama was the reason Trump was initially propelled into the political sphere; as one of the strong voices of the racially charged birther movement that falsely suggested Obama was not born in the U.S., Trump suddenly found himself speaking about national politics, announcing a run for office several years later.
We want to make it harder for the powerful to lie.
Win Mcnamee/Pool/CNP/Zuma
Kanyakrit Vongkiatkajorn October 12, 2017
The Trump administration announced late Thursday night that it would no longer provide key health insurance subsidies that are intended to keep costs down for lower-income Americans. The move, widely viewed as an effort to sabotage Obamacare, has the potential to disrupt insurance markets. The subsidies, which are paid to insurance companies, help cover the cost of providing affordable coverage.
“The bailout of insurance companies through these unlawful payments is yet another example of how the previous administration abused taxpayer dollars and skirted the law to prop up a broken system,” the White House Press Office said in an emailed statement. “Congress needs to repeal and replace the disastrous Obamacare law and provide real relief to the American people.”
The brilliant Ali Velshi of MSNBC just hosted a TedTalk in which he detailed the dangers of fake news and what we can ALL do to stop its spread…
MSNBC's Ali Velshi Explains How to Combat Fake News
The brilliant Ali Velshi of MSNBC just hosted a TedTalk in which he detailed the dangers of fake news and what we can ALL do to stop its spread…Shared by Occupy Democrats; like our page for more!
Posted by Occupy Democrats on Friday, October 13, 2017
epa06169232 US President Donald J. Trump attends a joint news conference with President Sauli Niinisto of Finland in the East Room of the White House in…MICHAEL REYNOLDS
By Steve Benen October 12, 2017
In 2009, after President Obama had been in office for about eight months, he and some of his top aides had some unkind things to say about Fox News. As regular readers may recall, the Beltway establishment did not take it well.
The Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus, for example, was outraged – not because the Democratic president had said something untrue, but because Obama had the audacity to criticize a major news organization directly. Marcus called the White House’s Fox criticisms “dumb,” “childish,” “petty,” “self-defeating,” and having “a distinct Nixonian … aroma.”
Soon after, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) took the Senate floor to complain that the White House’s criticism of a news organization was evidence of the president’s team creating an “enemies list.”
Eight years later, I wonder what the reaction would’ve been if Obama had threatened the broadcast licenses of news organizations that ran reports that the White House disapproved of.
Yesterday morning, Donald Trump, apparently irked by NBC News, asked rhetorically at what point it might be “appropriate to challenge” the broadcast licenses of networks he apparently doesn’t like. He went on to suggest major American news organizations are “bad for country!” Ten hours later, the president turned the question into a statement.
“Network news has become so partisan, distorted and fake that licenses must be challenged and, if appropriate, revoked. Not fair to public!”
Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), an occasional Trump critic who nevertheless votes with the White House’s position in nearly every instance, responded by asking whether the president is “recanting” his oath of office – since it was nine months ago when Trump swore to “preserve, protect, and defend” the Constitution, which includes the First Amendment.
And while that’s a compelling point, all of this got me thinking: if Trump’s authoritarian instincts got the best of him, and he actually tried to follow through on these threats, what would (or could) he do?
TPM’s Tierney Sneed had a helpful piece on this:
First off, NBC itself as a broadcast network isn’t licensed by the FCC. NBC’s potential vulnerability would come as the owner and operator of 28 individual local stations, including its Telemundo station (There are also dozens of NBC affiliates that NBC does not own and thus does not hold the licenses to.)
Second, the FCC license renewal process Trump suggested could be used to retaliate against NBC occurs every eight years. According to experts, it’s basically a rubber stamp and stations’ licenses are almost always renewed, though citizens in the localities of a station can technically challenge a license, as can a station’s competitors, if the station is doing competitive harm. To challenge NBC’s licenses, someone would have to do so in each of the individual local communities and they would face an uphill battle, legally speaking, especially after the deregulation that occurred starting with the Reagan administration.
I rather doubt Trump is aware of these details. Call it a hunch.
Postscript: Richard Nixon actually did use his office to go after media outlets’ licenses during the Watergate scandal in 1973. Those who compared Obama to Nixon in 2009 were apparently off by eight years (and one president).
Second Postscript: Because there’s a contradictory tweet from the president’s recent past, let’s note that in May 2013, Trump denounced the Obama administration’s efforts to “intimidate” reporters. The irony is rich.
How Trump’s executive order could weaken Obamacare
President Trump’s executive order on health care could have ripple effects throughout the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces. Here’s what you need to know. (Video: Jenny Starrs/Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
By Amy Goldstein October 12, 2017
BREAKING: President Trump will end cost-sharing payments in the Affordable Care Act marketplaces that have helped lower-income consumers afford their health plans. The move, confirmed late Thursday by two people briefed on the decision, is likely to immediately threaten the marketplaces and could prompt insurers to withdraw. This story is developing.
President Trump signed an executive order Thursday intended to circumvent the Affordable Care Act by making it easier for individuals and small businesses to buy alternative types of health insurance with lower prices, fewer benefits and weaker government protections.
The White House and allies portrayed the president’s move as wielding administrative powers to accomplish what congressional Republicans have failed to achieve: fostering more coverage choices while tearing down the law’s insurance marketplaces. The order represents Trump’s biggest step to date to reverse the health-care policies of the Obama administration, a central promise since last year’s presidential campaign.
Critics, who include state insurance commissioners, most of the health-insurance industry and mainstream policy specialists, predict that a proliferation of these other kinds of coverage will have damaging ripple effects, driving up costs for consumers with serious medical conditions and prompting more insurers to flee the law’s marketplaces. Part of Trump’s action, they say, will spark court challenges over its legality.
The most far-reaching element of the order instructs a trio of Cabinet departments to rewrite federal rules for “association health plans” — a form of insurance in which small businesses of a similar type band together through an association to negotiate health benefits. These plans have had to meet coverage requirements and consumer protections under the 2010 health-care law, but the administration is likely to exempt them from those rules and let such plans be sold from state to state without insurance licenses in each one.
How the Trump administration is undermining the ACA View Graphic
In addition, the order is designed to expand the availability of short-term insurance policies, which offer limited benefits as a bridge for people between jobs or young adults no longer eligible for their parents’ health plans. The Obama administration ruled that short-term insurance may not last for more than three months; Trump wants to extend that to nearly a year.
Trump’s action also is intended to widen employers’ ability to use pretax dollars in “health reimbursement arrangements” to help workers pay for any medical expenses, not just for health policies that meet ACA rules — another reversal of Obama policy.
In a late-morning signing ceremony in the White House’s Roosevelt Room, surrounded by supportive small-business owners, Cabinet members and a few Republicans from Capitol Hill, the president spoke in his characteristic superlatives about the effects of his action and what he called “the Obamacare nightmare.”
Trump said that Thursday’s move, which will trigger months of regulatory work by federal agencies, “is only the beginning.” He promised “even more relief and more freedom” from ACA rules. And although leading GOP lawmakers are eager to move on from their unsuccessful attempts this year to abolish central facets of the 2010 law, Trump said that “we are going to pressure Congress very strongly to finish the repeal and replace of Obamacare.”
The executive order will fulfill a quest by conservative Republican lawmakers, especially in the House, who have tried for more than two decades to expand the availability of association health plans by allowing them to be sold, unregulated, across state lines. On the other hand, Trump’s approach conflicts with what he and GOP leaders in Congress have held out as a main health-policy goal — giving each state more discretion over matters of insurance.
Health policy experts in think tanks, academia and the health-care industry pointed out that the order’s language is fairly broad, so the ensuing fine print in agencies’ rules will determine whether the impact will be as sweeping or quick as Trump boasted — his directive will provide “millions of people with Obamacare relief,” he said.
Significant questions that remain include whether individuals will be able to join associations, an issue that could raise legal issues; whether the administration will start to let association health plans count toward the ACA’s requirement that most Americans carry insurance; and whether such plans can charge higher prices to small businesses with sicker workers — or refuse to insure them.
Trump signs executive order on health care
President Trump signed an executive order on the Affordable Care Act on Oct. 12. With the order, he directed federal agencies to rewrite regulations on selling a certain type of health insurance across state lines. (Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
The president issued the directive less than three weeks before the Nov. 1 start of the fifth open-enrollment season in ACA marketplaces for people who do not have access to affordable health benefits through a job. Trump noted that about half of the nation’s counties will have just one insurer in their exchange, and he claimed that “many will have none.” However, the most recent canvass shows that there will be no “bare” counties in 2018.
A senior administration official, speaking to reporters on the condition of anonymity shortly before Trump signed the order, said that the policy changes it sets in motion will require agencies to follow customary procedures to write new rules and solicit public comment. That means new insurance options will not be available in time for coverage beginning in January, he said.
Even so, with a shortened sign-up period and large cuts in federal funds for advertising and enrollment help already hobbling the marketplaces, “if there’s a lot of hoopla around new options that may be available soon, it could be one more thing that discourages enrollment,” said Larry Levitt, the Kaiser Family Foundation’s senior vice president.
Other aspects of the executive order include commissioning a six-month study, to be led by federal health officials, of ways to limit consolidation within the insurance and hospital industries. Trump also directed agencies to find additional means to increase competition and choice in health care to improve its quality and lower its cost.
The order produced predictable reactions in Congress, with Republican leaders praising the move and Democrats accusing the White House of sabotaging the law.
Among policy experts, critics warned that young and healthy people who use relatively little insurance will gravitate to association health plans because of their lower price tags. That would concentrate older and sicker customers in ACA marketplaces with spiking rates.
Mike Consedine, chief executive of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) said Thursday that the group has long opposed such plans and is concerned that the administration will allow ones that can bypass state licenses and have such weak financial underpinnings that some will collapse, leaving customers stranded and state insurance regulators “picking up the pieces.”
[As ACA enrollment nears, administration keeps cutting federal support of the law]
Short-term health insurance makes up a tiny fraction of the policies sold, with fewer than 30 companies covering only about 160,000 people nationwide at the end of last year, according to NAIC data.
Experts could not point to figures for how many association health plans exist or how many people they insure. Such arrangements have existed for decades, and scandals have on occasion exposed “multi-employer welfare arrangements” started by unscrupulous operators who took members’ money and either did not have enough reserves to cover hospital bills or absconded with premiums.
The National Federation of Independent Business, a small-business lobby, has pressed Congress to allow use of association plans, arguing that they can be less expensive and give workers more insurance choices. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has promoted the idea, and he stood just behind Trump at the morning ceremony. After nearly walking out of the room without signing the order, the president returned to affix his bold signature to the document and then hand Paul the pen.
Selling health plans from state to state without separate licenses — the idea underlying much of the president’s order — has long been a Republican mantra. It has gained little traction in practice, however.
Half a dozen states — before the ACA was passed in 2010 as well as since then — have passed laws permitting insurers to sell health policies approved by other states. And since last year, the ACA has allowed “compacts” in which groups of states can agree that health plans licensed in any of them could be sold in the others. Under such compacts, federal health officials must make sure the plans offer at least the same benefits and are as affordable as those sold in the ACA marketplaces.
As of this summer, “no state was known to actually offer or sell such policies,” according to a report by the National Conference of State Legislatures. A main reason, experts say, is insurers’ difficulty in arranging networks of doctors and other providers of care far from their home states.
Amy Goldstein is The Washington Post’s national health-care policy writer. During her 30 years at The Post, her stories have taken her from homeless shelters to Air Force One, often focused on the intersection of politics and public policy. She is the author of the book, Janesville: An American Story.
Aaron Rupar October 12, 2017
CREDIT: SCREENGRAB
During his latest interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, President Trump went on a confused rant about the economy, at one point falsely suggesting that stock market gains are helping pay down the national debt.
“I’m so proud of the $5.2 trillion dollars of increase in the stock market,” Trump said, referring to the bull market that began as the economy pulled out of the Great Recession during the months after President Obama took office.
“Now, if you look at the stock market, that’s one element, but then we have many other elements. The country — we took it over, it owed $20 trillion, as you know, the last eight years they borrowed more than it did in the whole history of our country, so they borrowed more than $10 trillion — and yet, we picked up $5.2 trillion in the stock market, possibly picked up the whole things in terms of the first nine months in terms of value.”
“So, you could say in one sense we are really increasing values, and maybe in a sense we are reducing debt,” Trump added, before Hannity quickly moved on to another topic.
But it just doesn’t work like that. As CNBC details, to see why this doesn’t make sense, consider the relationship (or lack thereof) between the stock market and debt during the Obama administration.
“For evidence that the two metrics have little to no bearing on one another, look no further than the eight years of the Obama presidency: Between 2009 and 2017, the S&P 500 returned 235 percent while the national debt soared,” CNBC’s Christina Wilkie writes.
The national debt is a tough topic for Trump these days. Though candidate Trump repeatedly promised to pay down the national debt before the end of his term, it has actually expanded under his watch. And the tax cuts for corporations and the ultra wealthy he’s currently pushing would only make the debt bigger.
As Reuters explains:
The Republican tax plan unveiled last week calls for as much as $6 trillion in tax cuts that would sharply reduce federal revenues. No commensurate spending cuts have been proposed. So, on their own, the tax cuts being sought by Trump would hugely expand the deficit and add to the debt.
Trump’s comments to Hannity were not the first time he’s revealed deep confusion about how the economy works. While he was pushing Obamacare repeal over the summer, Trump did an interview where he indicated he thinks it’s possible to purchase health insurance for $12 annually. During an interview last week, Trump unexpectedly claimed he wants to eliminate Puerto Rico’s $72 billion debt, saying “we’re going to work something out.” But in an indication that the president may not have understood what he was saying, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney quickly walked back Trump’s comments, telling CNN the next morning that “I wouldn’t take it word for word with that.”
Don’t take Trump seriously or literally.
Mulvaney has also walked back Trump’s campaign promises about eliminating the national debt. Asked during a TV interview in April about Trump’s promise to eliminate it by the end of his second term, Mulvaney replied, “It’s fairly safe to assume that was hyperbole.”