Elsewhere: the ACA survives and thrives

 For BlueWaveNJ, I've overviewed the legal threats to the ACA -- just overcome and still pending; the subsidy boosts enacted in the American Rescue Plan and their effects so far; and likely and unlikely next steps.  I covered similar ground at healthinsurance.org, with more attention to the remaining subsidy-eligible uninsured and measures to smooth and encourage enrollment.

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NJ legislature rushing to enable de facto for-profit conversion of Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield

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After 25 years of trying, Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, which provides health insurance to more than a third of the state's residents, is on the brink of pushing through the legislature a bill (S3218/A5119) enabling de facto for-profit conversion, or at least a stepping stone to such conversion. The bill has passed through key committees and is scheduled for a floor vote tomorrow (Dec. 17).

The complex bill, obviously written by Horizon executives, reorganizes the current nonprofit established by statute as a nonprofit -- but not charitable -- mutual holding company, with the insurer becoming a for-profit subsidiary, and the holding company empowered to create more for-profit subsidiaries, all of which can sell stock to investors. Horizon would pay $600 million up front to the state as compensation for a favorable change in its tax status, with a dubious commitment to contribute another $650 billion over nearly two decades, dependent on its degree of profitability. That money will go into the state's general fund -- not into a health foundation as in other states that have authorized conversion. Horizon has an estimated $7 billion in assets that as of now belong by statute to the people of New Jersey.

The state's dominant Democratic party is behind this legislation -- whether because of Horizon's powerful position in the state, credence lent to the company's happy talk about investment in new technologies and its existing charitable programs, or desperation for cash in the wake of the pandemic's devastation. 

Trump's healthcare plan, revealed

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Let it not be said that Trump doesn't have a healthcare plan. It's this:

• Defund the ACA marketplace and Medicaid expansion
• Strangle Medicaid long-term via block grants or per capita caps
• Privatize Medicare

Oh right, that's the healthcare plan of the entire Republican Party.  

I have a post up on the BlueWaveNJ that lays this program out:

Toward universal coverage: A bestiary of Democratic healthcare bills

I have a post up at BlueWaveNJ that offers a framework for assessing more than a half dozen Democratic bills that would build on or replace the ACA to move the U.S. closer to universal healthcare. Here's the premise:

The extent to which these various bills address the demand for affordability can be viewed in two dimensions.

First is the degree to which they make coverage more affordable and reduce out-of-pocket costs for the ACA's original intended beneficiaries: those who lack access to other affordable insurance, mainly employer-sponsored insurance. Second is the degree to which they impact affordability for the 150-plus million current enrollees in employer plans.

A third question is the degree to which each bill reduces healthcare costs on a per person basis, including costs paid by government. Most (not all) Medicare expansion/public option bills increase the population enrolled in plans paying Medicare rates to healthcare providers, as opposed to much higher commercial rates. Most also establish some kind of drug pricing commission enabling Medicare to negotiate or regulate prescription drug prices.

The post, an updated and somewhat streamlined version of this one, overviews seven bills.  Hope you'll take a look.

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BlueWaveNJ on the cost of ACA nullification

Here's what BlueWaveNJ thinks of Donald Trump's now-total support for the ridiculous suit seeking to nullify the entire ACA:

The Trump administration's recent shift to full support of a lawsuit filed by 20 Republican attorneys general and governors seeking to have the entire Affordable Care Act declared unconstitutional is a legal absurdity and a wantonly cruel and reckless policy decision. The plaintiffs argue, and the Trump administration now agrees, that the entire ACA became unconstitutional when Congress reduced the individual mandate penalty to zero in late 2017, because the Supreme Court in 2012 held that the mandate was Constitutional only as an exercise of Congress's taxing power. That is rank sophistry rejected by attorneys and legal scholars across the political spectrum -- suggesting in effect that the Republican Congress repealed the ACA by accident when it zeroed out the mandate penalty as part of the tax package passed in December 2017 after failing in multiple attempts to repeal the law's core programs earlier that year.

There's more...  

On modular Medicare expansions

On the BlueWaveNJ blog, I have a post ruminating over where a successful Democratic presidential candidate might land with respect to various bills and plan outlines to establish Medicare for All, Medicare for All Who Want or Need It, Medicare for More, etc. I speculate that such candidate might want to make a build-out as modular as possible:

A candidate who seeks flexibility might seek to make her plan as modular as possible. First steps might include a strong public option introduced into the ACA -- one tied to Medicare rates,that providers who accept Medicare would have to accept.  Such a plan would probably also entail raising the value of a benchmark ACA plan, as the Merkley-Murphy Choose Medicare Act does. The ACA's silver plan benchmark, designed to cover 70% of the average enrollee's costs, clearly has not cut it with the public (in some cases, it now includes deductibles as high as $6,000). Incremental steps could include allowing small business buy-in and then large employer buy-in.  Integrating first steps with an ACA upgrade enables next steps to be contingent -- on need, budget and system performance. 

The case against this would be losing a window to mandate sweeping systemic change. I can see that. In any case, I hope you'll take a look at my view of the spectrum of possibility.

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Framing the battle for the House in New Jersey: Healthcare!

At BlueWaveNJ, I've been part of a team that's produced print handouts to frame the healthcare debate in three battleground congressional districts:

• NJ-3, where Obama admin alum Andy Kim is challenging Tom MacArthur, the "moderate" who brought the AHCA, Paul Ryan's ACA repeal bill, back from the dead with an amendment allowing states to re-introduce medical underwriting in the individual market.


• NJ-7, where Tom Malinowski, Obama's former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, is challenging Leonard Lance, a relative moderate who voted against the AHCA after voting to "repeal, defund or dismantle" the ACA (his words) more than forty times.

• NJ-11, where current House Budget Committee Chair Rodney Frelinghuysen is retiring, and Tea Party darling/state rep Jay Webber, a blood enemy of Planned Parenthood, is running against former Navy helicopter pilot and federal prosecutor Mikie Sherrill.

Of the three, Malinowski has the most detailed and thoughtful healthcare policy positions, including support for a broad Medicare opt-in plan like the Center for American Progress's  Medicare Extra plan. But the focus in each of these pieces is really on the Republican's buy-in  to Team GOP's recent attempts and current plans to dismantle existing healthcare programs -- the ACA, Medicaid, and, ultimately, Medicare -- and the Democrat's commitment to preserving what's already in place.

Below the fold, screenshots of each candidate contrast. At bottom, the front of each of these 5&8 "postcards." Going extra large for MacArthur, who's as responsible as anyone for repeal getting so close.

Getting creamed in New Jersey: Testimony of the unsubsidized

As noted in my last post  (and called for in my January op-ed), a bill introduced in the New Jersey Senate  (S-1877) last month would implement a state individual mandate and earmark the penalty revenue for a state reinsurance program. A companion bill (S-1878) would authorize pursuit of an ACA innovation waiver to seek federal funding for the reinsurance, as Alaska, Oregon and Minnesota* have successfully done.

BlueWaveNJ, a grassroots group for which I volunteer, supports these paired bills. We have lots of members who insure themselves through the individual market -- many subsidized, and many unsubsidized. In support of the bills, we collected testimony from the latter group -- who were slammed by this year's premium increases. Yesterday, I submitted their testimony at a hearing of the state Senate's Budget and Appropriations Committee, which approved amended versions of both bills.

The testimony is posted here, on the BlueWaveNJ website. As the personal narratives indicate:

These are individuals in their fifties and sixties now facing premiums in the $600-1000/month range and family premiums north of $2000.  They describe tough choices between narrow network coverage and still-higher premiums, or between narrow networks and down-sizing to bronze plans that offer basically catastrophic coverage. Subsidized members are faced with a similar choice between ultra-narrow networks and steep premium increases or reduced coverage.

If bipartisan ACA legislation comes back to the House, remember the Problem Solvers

As hope goes stronger that the Senate will reject the ruinous Graham-Cassidy ACA repeal bill, the back-burnered Senate HELP Committee hearings in pursuit of bipartisan legislation to stabilize the individual insurance market may become relevant again. On Sept. 20, HELP chair Lamar Alexander pulled out of the talks to get on team Scorched Earth.  After John McCain came out against Graham-Cassidy yesterday, Patty Murray, ranking Democrat on the HELP Committee, put out this statement:

I  agree with Senator McCain that the right way to get things done in the Senate—especially on an issue as important to families as their health care—is through regular order and working together to find common ground. I’m still at the table ready to keep working, and I remain confident that we can reach a bipartisan agreement as soon as this latest partisan approach by Republican leaders is finally set aside.

That raises the possibility too that at some point the Problem Solvers, the House caucus formed to seek bipartisan solutions on multiple fronts, could also become relevant. On July 31, the Problem Solvers released a five-point outline for bipartisan market stabilization legislation. As in the HELP Committee, "state flexibility" -- i.e. some easing of the process for states seeking ACA Section 1332 innovation waivers -- was a plank.

On September 5, the day before the first HELP Committee hearing, I participated in a call between BlueWaveNJ and Rep. Josh Gottheimer, Democratic co-chair of the Problem Solvers. It seems another lifetime, as the Graham-Cassidy cancer was still in watchful waiting phase, but we were concerned as to what Democratic Problems Solvers might be prepared to yield on the waiver front. Here's what we learned, as reported on the BlueWaveNJ blog:

A pill quite poison from Frelinghuysen

In late June, a subcommittee of the House Committee on Appropriations, chaired by Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ), released a financial services appropriations bill that hamstrings the IRS's ability to police the phony "charities" corrupting our politics; bars the SEC from requiring disclosure of political contributions in SEC filings; and, amid sundry other acts of regulatory sabotage, prohibits the IRS from enforcing the ACA's individual mandate. The Appropriations Committee approved the bill yesterday.

Frelinghuysen, a once-moderate Republican driven relentlessly to the right and now riding the Trump train, was the focus of intense citizen action this spring, and a key last-minute opponent of the first iteration of the House ACA repeal/Medicaid destruction act.  He then flipped, reportedly under pain of losing his Appropriations chair, and supported the version that passed the House, which of course addressed none of his stated concerns (for Medicaid expansion beneficiaries and people with pre-existing conditions) and in fact made the bill's treatment of the latter worse. Now, he's given his blessing to ACA marketplace sabotage in the event Republicans fail to pass a bill still more horrific than the one he supported. In a press release, he praised the bill for "stopping burdensome regulations before they can damage our economy irreparably."

I have an op-ed in NJ Spotlight, a nonprofit state news source calling Frelinghuysen out for this. I signed it as a member of BlueWaveNJ, a local advocacy group based in Montclair, most of whose members are represented by Frelinghuysen. He encapsulates the descent of the Republican party first into right-wing extremism (he voted to defund Planned Parenthood) and then into fascist fellow traveling and even self-Trumpification  (he's been in the spotlight and may be in legal trouble for intimidating a local activist). We want him out.

Affordable Care Anthem

In the fight against ACA repeal, the healthcare committee of our local advocacy group, BlueWaveNJ, cooked up some songs to warm the rallies and vigils aimed at the state's five Republican members of Congress -- four of whom came out against the AHCA, Ryan's repeal bill. Here's one of my contributions, with some local references -- e.g. to Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, NJ-11, chair of the House Appropriations Committee.  Here's a snippet from the local NBC affiliate that includes us singing outside his office.

The tune is This Land is Your Land....

After an election
we got a health scare:
Extremists tried to
take away our healthcare.
But we're united,
and they're divided...
Healthcare's a right for you and me.

Chorus

Healthcare is your right,
healthcare is my right,
Ii they try to take it,
we're gonna fight fight.
Tax breaks for the wealthy
won't make us healthy,
Healthcare's a right for you and me.

Uninsuring millions                                De-localized alt:
is a pill quite poison,                              should be rejected
so hear our voices,                                by those who hope to
Rep Frelinghuysen!                               be re-elected.
We sing in chorus:
Don't un-insure us...
Healthcare's a right for you and me.