States must hold Trump to his word on working with them to solve ObamaCare
Jun 15, 2018This opinion piece appeared in The Hill, you can read the full piece here.
On the very day he was inaugurated, President Trump issued his first executive order directing all federal agencies to cooperate with and “provide greater flexibility to States” as they looked for ways to stop the premium pains of Obamacare. So far, 500 days later, that order has yet to be followed.
Sure, Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price and the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Seema Verma promptly called for innovative solutions and promised to work with states to numb the pain that Obamacare continues to inflict on health care markets. But actions always speak louder than words and, thus far at least, federal action has denied or delayed most of the state innovation waivers requested under Section 1332 of the Affordable Care Act.
Most recently, for example, HHS denied Ohio’s waiver request to exempt Ohioans from Obamacare’s individual mandate to buy health insurance. Ohio acknowledged that the penalty for violating the mandate will be $0 in 2019, but it rightly worries that so long as the mandate remains the law the tax penalty could be reinstated. Ohio’s application followed the HHS blueprint for innovation waivers, but HHS denied the state’s request because it did not “describe the reason for the waiver request.”
