Being happily reported by Democrats is the "extension" of subsidies for cost sharing, the payments made on behalf of a fraction of the merely at most 11 million people enrolled on exchanges for Obamacare entitlement plans.
First, the preferences devised by the crafters of Obamacare for this new entitlement class are problematic on many levels, including rampant fraudulent payments as reported by the Obama Administration and the CBO, also, loopholes that allow millionaires who can finagle their income into Obamacare guidelines to receive entitlement money, since there is no assets test involved in the entitlement payments, and the fact that the rest of us nonpublic employee workers have paid double-digits more for health insurance since Obamacare are a few of the problems with the original legislation.
Then there were the Obama reactions to problems. For instance, instead of going after wrongful and fraudulent overpayments, Congress "forgave" them, being the sports they are with taxpayer money. Instead of closing loopholes, the Obama Administration went to the Supreme Court to INCREASE the payments made under Obamacare in the form of premium payments, so eager were they to preserve Obamacare, not affordable health insurance, not access, not health, just the Obama health insurance entitlement program for working Americans with incomes between certain amounts.
Now we've reached a new level of anti-consumer nuttiness. President Trump's Administration, instead of finalizing the court ruling declaring the cost-sharing payments illegal as paid and dropping an Obama White House challenge to a court ruling stating the same, the Trump Administration, has NOT dropped the challenge initiated by Obama which has kept these payments going.
With the failure of the Republicans to do anything they promised or anything pro-non-public employee middle class consumer, President Trump is really making a mistake if he allows this "deal" to go through. The challenge to the lower court's decision should be dropped, that lower court decision should be finalized and the cost-sharing subsidies should cease. Yet, now we see the awful Congressional Republicans sniffing after Democrats like trained dogs, acting as if the cessation of these payments is "why" insurers are charging more. Are you kidding?
The silliness of this argument belies facts, including the facts that insurers have been raising rates in double digits for insurance that covers less through the Obamacare years and that even healthcare.gov has advised, during Obama's years that "changing plans," the old game of less coverage could help make this atrocity of bad choices more affordable.
Then there's the FACT that prior federal government payoffs to insurers to "stabilize" them have not worked. The Obamacare reinsurance and risk corridor provisions were DESIGNED to be temporary, that's why they were called TRANSITIONAL in Obamacare. They also expired at the end of last year, and that's why back then, before President Trump, we started hearing about rising rates and exodus from exchanges.
Not only have the likes of Paul Ryan et al Republican morons shown their incompetence in devising a replacement plan, not only did they lie about having a replacement plan agreed to by Republicans, not only were they too lazy to work on it and get some agreement, not only are they sniffing after Democrats buying into the most obviously idiotically untrue of Dem arguments, but now they're desperately kow-towing to a "DEAL" that promises to continue payments declared by at least one court unlawful and agreeing to pay out even more money to insurance companies hoping like desperate clowns that insurers will be satisfied for two years. Their contempt for voters and the American people make them dangerous to us, as they were when they sucked up Obamacare even as they protected their own superior benefits.
These Republican Congressional dopes are not even playing the TIMING game so masterfully played by Obama. Remember Obamacare? Obama elected in 2008, Obamacare enacted 2010 BUT its most draconian provisions proving the fallacy that it did any good for most consumers was DELAYED until the benefits year of 2014, meaning until the end of 2013. This meant we were happily in the dark believing all the lies of Obamacare, right through that President's reelection in 2012. Convenient wasn't it?
But the Republicans can't even get that right. A two year extension will mean that insurers will be making their next extortion demands right around election time, giving the Democrats not only their payments, but enabling them to terrify consumers that if they don't elect a Democrat in 2020, they'll be doomed.
President Trump should go with the HHS decision to stop cost-sharing. He should drop the challenge to the lower court decision that the cost-sharing was not a federal entitlement to insurance companies in perpetuity beyond the scope of budgeting. He should immediately take whatever action he can to END the public employee benefits that protect public employees from the very laws they're imposing on the rest of America. Most of all, Trump should not show the same contempt for people that Congress does. This idea of "stabilizing" insurance companies by making federal payoffs to them is not only transparent but has been proven by Obamacare not to work. It's as moronic as Republicans arguing the "trickle down" fallacy of employment, helping the rich will trickle down to the middle class, also proven wrong and NOT helping the middle class.
President Trump may be over his head with the ingrained entitlement receiving population of Republican Congresspeople working against him, it doesn't mean he should buy in and suck up to them, because those Congresspeople rode Trump's coattails to election, not the other way around.
