With executive order, Trump tosses a ‘bomb’ into fragile health insurance markets
Even before the Republican-led Congress acts to repeal the 2010 law, the new administration will move swiftly to unwind as many elements as it can on its own — elements that have changed how 20 million Americans get health coverage and what benefits insurers must offer some of their customers.
.. Robert Laszewski, president of the consulting firm Health Policy and Strategy Associates, called the executive order a “bomb” lobbed into the law’s “already shaky” insurance market. Given the time it will take Republicans to fashion a replacement, he expects that federal and state insurance exchanges will continue to operate at least through 2018.
“Instead of sending a signal that there’s going to be an orderly transition, they’ve sent a signal that it’s going to be a disorderly transition,” said Laszewski, a longtime critic of the law, which is also known as Obamacare. “How does the Trump administration think this is not going to make the situation worse?”.. the president’s decision to sign the order on his first day in office, coupled with his recent comments about moving swiftly on repealing and replacing the law, has applied pressure on GOP lawmakers to act faster than they might have initially planned... Democratic leaders, however, are casting the executive order as evidence that Republicans are in a state of disarray on health care... Chris Jennings, who served as a senior White House adviser on health care in the Clinton and Obama administrations, said that in the health-care arena, “more than any other domestic policy, details matter. Plans, they live off a comma, or an incentive, or a disincentive, or a penalty, or an enforcement mechanism.”