Kevin Knauss: Health, History, Travel, Insurance
Posts of my opinion and analysis of Donald Trump.
Covered California has been studying how different changes to the ACA will impact their ability to meet their projected budget and offer affordable health insurance to consumers. At the Covered California January Board meeting they released six reports they commissioned that studied consumer attitudes toward health insurance and potential changes to the ACA.
Under an Executive order signed by President Trump on January 20, 2017, he gave federal bureaucracies the discretion and authority to waive any provision of the Affordable Care Act that might impose a fiscal burden on individuals and families. Two of the most prominent fiscal burdens are the repayment of excess Advance Premium Tax Credits and the Shared Responsibility Payment also known as the individual mandate penalty for not having health insurance.
California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones slammed President Trump’s Executive Order relaxing enforcement of the Affordable Care Acts provisions as potentially destabilizing to the health insurance market.
I try to be pretty pragmatic when it comes to presidential elections. Regardless of the promises made by any candidate, we rarely see any real change in the U.S. with the election of a new president. However, Donald Trump ran on a platform to repeal and replace Obamacare. Since 90% of my income comes from enrollment generated by the Affordable Care Act, I am facing a drastic reduction of my income if Trump fulfills his promise.
The one aspect of health insurance that the Affordable Care Act did not address is the cost of health care services. Without a governor on the prices that doctors and hospitals can charge, the health insurance companies must constantly increase their rates to cover the cost of health care expenses that seem to rise faster than the national average for inflation. One way to reign in the ever increasing costs of health care is by providing consumer information on the cost of health care services through price transparency. The Health Care Transparency Project has started an online petition to request the Trump administration implement price transparency for consumers.
Under the new GOP presidency and congress Obamacare looks to be repealed and the replacement to emphasize Health Savings Accounts. The economic rationale for Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) is that when consumers pay for their health care out of the accounts, they will drive down the cost of health care by favoring the least cost procedures. Unfortunately, HSAs without price transparency for the consumer does nothing to bring lower prices or efficiency to the market place. HSAs in our current market place are just scams.
My father would have loved Donald Trump running for President of the United States. Even though my fathered died in 2010, I can still hear echoes of his voice as Donald Trump fulminates with anger against women, minorities, and different religions. It took me many years to comprehend the well of anger my father possessed against so many people in this world. But just like Donald Trump, my father didn’t hate the people he spoke against, he feared them.
To imply, as Donald Trump has, that his bankruptcies were just part of the ethical business practices afforded to entrepreneurs like him and are standard operating procedure for corporations is just an anathema to me. Just because a business practice is legal does not mean that it is ethical. An ethical business person does everything in his or her power to meet their financial obligations. An ethical business person puts those people who have extended credit, supplied goods and services, or made deposits on future products before their own financial well-being. Donald Trump obviously was raised in a different business environment than I was.
