Update, 3/8/18: Various analyses are now predicting steeper premium hikes and coverage losses than I anticipated here, resulting from the combined effects of mandate repeal and greenlighting of short-term and AHP plans. See Urban Institute, 2/26, and Covered California, 3/8.
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Since it first hit email boxes a few months (or maybe a year-plus?) ago, Vitals, Axios' healthcare e-newsletter, has beguiled its way into a first read. Editor Sam Baker, and Axios generally, have taken the holy grail (or shibboleth) of contemporary prose, concision, to a new level, sating our short attention spans while salting news aggregation with interpretation. I find the trademark "be smart" tagline a touch patronizing, but the substance of that signposted takeaway is nearly always on point.
That said, I'm going to quibble with today's lead storylette, with a point behind the quibble that goes beyond Axios, I think.
The news item is HHS's proposed rule to allow loosely regulated short-term health plans to be sold for terms as long as a year rather than three months, the limit that went into effect last April. Since short-term plans are cheap, medically underwritten and not bound to cover Essential Health Benefits, they are poised to attract healthier buyers. With this rule, Trump's HHS punches one more hole in the ACA risk pool
Here's my quibble. According to Sam Baker, The ACA-compliant individual market is "sliding deeper into something a lot more like a makeshift high-risk pool, in which healthy people are absent and the government simply pays to cover sick people." I think that's overstated.
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Since it first hit email boxes a few months (or maybe a year-plus?) ago, Vitals, Axios' healthcare e-newsletter, has beguiled its way into a first read. Editor Sam Baker, and Axios generally, have taken the holy grail (or shibboleth) of contemporary prose, concision, to a new level, sating our short attention spans while salting news aggregation with interpretation. I find the trademark "be smart" tagline a touch patronizing, but the substance of that signposted takeaway is nearly always on point.
That said, I'm going to quibble with today's lead storylette, with a point behind the quibble that goes beyond Axios, I think.
The news item is HHS's proposed rule to allow loosely regulated short-term health plans to be sold for terms as long as a year rather than three months, the limit that went into effect last April. Since short-term plans are cheap, medically underwritten and not bound to cover Essential Health Benefits, they are poised to attract healthier buyers. With this rule, Trump's HHS punches one more hole in the ACA risk pool
Here's my quibble. According to Sam Baker, The ACA-compliant individual market is "sliding deeper into something a lot more like a makeshift high-risk pool, in which healthy people are absent and the government simply pays to cover sick people." I think that's overstated.
