Early this week, in a letter to Senate Finance Committee Chair Orrin Hatch, the America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the largest association of private health insurers, basically begged Republicans to stop threatening to uninsure tens of millions in the name of reform.
AHIP voiced support for community rating, guaranteed issue, income- and age-based subsidies, and an enforcement measure sufficient to induce people to buy insurance. In other words, for preserving the ACA marketplace with a few regulatory teaks -- and with the AHCA's $138 billion in federal funding for state reinsurance or other "stability" measures tossed in.
Striking on its face though the health insurance industry's renunciation of medical underwriting may be, the most remarkable part of the letter comes early, in its reframing of what healthcare "reform," Republican-style, is all about. AHCA opponents have been screaming for months that at the bill's core is a $900 billion tax cut* paid for by an $800+ billion Medicaid cut. It's been hard to break through the noise with that core equation, given the AHCA drafters' high-strung debates about various proposed malformations of the individual market. AHIP puts the pieces in perspective:
