HEALTHCARE/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump’s executive order on health insurance, the most significant step so far to put his stamp on health policy, is designed to give more options to healthy consumers. It also could divide the insurance market in two.
The order, to be signed this week, will begin rolling back some requirements of the Affordable Care Act and could allow insurers to offer the kinds of lower-cost, less-comprehensive plans that were restricted by the 2010 health law.
A Trump administration official who previewed the order said it was aimed at promoting competition and choice in the health-care markets. One result, analysts said, could be that healthy people are drawn to the expanded, less-expensive plans, leaving sicker and higher-risk people in a dwindling pool that sees higher costs.
Together, if executed in an expansive way, Mr. Trump’s changes could ’cause a bifurcation of the market,’ said Cori Uccello, senior health fellow at the American Academy of Actuaries. Insurers that offer plans under the ACA could face new difficulties, but companies also might find opportunities in offering new types of insurance.
Mr. Trump’s order, described by a senior administration official, will include broad instructions for federal agencies to loosen rules on health plans that the administration says have driven up premiums and reduced insurance offerings available to people who buy coverage on their own or who work for a small employer.”
-Louise Radnofsky, Anna Wilde Mathews, and Stephanie Arour, “Trump Executive Order Could Divide the Health Insurance Market,” The Wall Street Journal online, Oct. 8, 2017 08:28pm