A doctor-turned-House Republican is arguing that there is a direct link between the Affordable Care Act (ACA), colloquially known as Obamacare, and the increasing cost of healthcare putting a strain on Americans’ wallets.<\/p>\n
‘They removed choice by patients by limiting and prohibiting association health plans, so small businesses were disadvantaged,’ said Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa. <\/p>\n
‘They had mandates for how the rating for insurance companies can go \u2014 they had mandated essential benefits, so people that are young and healthy and may not want a lot of healthcare, they just want it for catastrophic, couldn’t get just catastrophic coverage, so there was no choice in what benefits you had.’<\/p>\n
Miller-Meeks said it led to people having to pay for their health premiums but not being able to afford the deductible to actually go see a doctor \u2014 in other words, ‘You can have insurance, but not care.’<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
She said costs were also driven up by ‘simple things such as prohibiting doctors from doing things in their office, but paying a hospital more, which led to the development of hospital outpatient clinics.’<\/p>\n
‘Well, they paid the hospitals more to do it, so you weren’t having [a simple procedure] done at a doctor’s office\u2026it was done at the hospital. So there are many things within the unaffordable care act that drove up healthcare costs,’ she explained.<\/p>\n
Miller-Meeks is leading the House GOP’s ‘Lower Health Care Premiums for All Americans Act,’ a bill that House Republican leaders say is aimed at lowering healthcare costs for a broader swath of the country than simply extending enhanced Obamacare subsidies that are set to expire at the end of this year.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
It’s set to be voted on in the early evening on Wednesday, when it’s expected to pass roughly along party lines.<\/p>\n
The plan as-is includes provisions to codify association health plans, which allow small businesses and people who are self-employed to band together to purchase healthcare coverage plans, giving them access to greater bargaining power.<\/p>\n
Republicans also plan to appropriate funding for cost-sharing reductions beginning in 2027, which are designed to lower out-of-pocket medical costs in the individual healthcare market. House GOP leadership aides said it would bring down the cost of premiums by 12%.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
New transparency requirements for pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) are also in the legislation, aimed at forcing PBMs to be more upfront about costs to employers.<\/p>\n
PBMs are third parties that act as intermediaries between pharmaceutical companies and those responsible for insurance coverage, often responsible for administrative tasks and negotiating drug prices.<\/p>\n
‘What’s important about this bill is that Republicans want to reduce healthcare costs for everyone, for all people, not just a select few. And we certainly don’t want to continue the corporate gravy train of subsidies to insurance companies, which then have no incentive to lower premiums,’ Miller-Meeks said.<\/p>\n
She said its various facets ‘will reduce premiums by 11%.’<\/p>\n
‘So it gives patients more choice, it allows more flexibility in what kind of insurance coverage they have, but most importantly, it’s the first bill to actually bring down premiums,’ Miller-Meeks said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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A doctor-turned-House Republican is arguing that there is a direct link between the Affordable Care Act (ACA), colloquially known as Obamacare, and the increasing cost of healthcare putting a strain on Americans’ wallets. ‘They removed choice by patients by limiting and prohibiting association health plans, so small businesses were disadvantaged,’ said Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1920,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bravemoneyminds.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bravemoneyminds.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bravemoneyminds.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bravemoneyminds.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bravemoneyminds.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bravemoneyminds.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1919\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bravemoneyminds.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bravemoneyminds.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bravemoneyminds.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bravemoneyminds.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}