November 4, 2019
by John McClaughry
Last week Senate Democrats proposed a resolution to put a stop to the Trump Administration’s State Innovation Waivers under the Affordable Care Act. This is known as section 1332 of Obamacare. The Trump Department of Health and Human Services has given waivers to seven states to use Obamacare funds for innovative programs to better serve patients, notably patients with pre-existing conditions, and ease the burden of premiums.
This is amusing because it was left wing Senators, notably Bernie Sanders, who demanded the inclusion of Sec. 1332 in the 2010 Obamacare act. Why? So that a state could create a program to transfer all of the Obamacare premium credits from reducing the expense of Vermonters’ insurance premiums, as Obamacare was designed to do, to the state, to finance a single payer health care plan.
And Bernie’s Vermont was first in line to try to do just that. Gov. Peter Shumlin, intent on winning national renown from peddling single payer here, counted on, getting $400 million in cash from Washington to make single payer work.
An early analysis by Rutland Treasurer Wendy Wilton showed that this lump sum payment under sec. 1332 wouldn’t come close to filling the enormous funding gap contained in Shumlin’s Green Mountain Care. And Wendy ‘s analysis was right on the mark. Shumlin scrapped his single payer pipedream in December 2014. Now the Democrats who created Sec. 1332 want to scrap that option altogether.
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