- On October 12, the Trump administration announced it would stop making cost-sharing reduction payments to insurers, because it lacked a constitutionally valid appropriation to do so—an action that restores Congress’ “power of the purse.”
- While some have proposed that Congress should appropriate funds for the payments, such action would effectively reward insurers’ prior risky behavior—assuming cost-sharing reductions would continue to be paid, even after a federal judge struck them down as unconstitutional—thereby perpetuating moral hazard.
- A better course of action is repealing the undermining regulations surrounding Obamacare, which necessitated the unconstitutional cost-sharing reduction payments to insurers in the first place.
Transformational Healthcare Reform
Transformational Healthcare Reform Key Points As hospitals and insurance systems have consolidated, patients have faced rising costs and narrower choices, while physicians have lost independence, and control has shifted to a handful of large corporate systems. Price transparency alone is not enough: patients and employers need clear disclosure of actual prices, fees, commissions, conflicts of...