The
Biden administration
recently
proposed new regulations
that would curb short-term
health plans
— or, as the White House likes to call them, “junk” or “scam” insurance.
But the true scam is this attempt to deprive people of affordable coverage they like.
BIDEN’S DEFICITS THREATEN ECONOMIC DOOM
Short-term plans
aren’t subject
to Obamacare’s many cost-inflating regulations, including requirements that insurers cover
10 essential health benefits
and that
bar insurers from charging
older enrollees any more than three times what they charge younger ones.
As a result, short-term plans are much cheaper than plans for sale through Obamacare’s exchanges. Monthly short-term premiums can be
as little as $55
— a bargain compared to the
$453 a month
a 40-year-old would pay for the average benchmark plan.
For many people — including young, healthy individuals and workers between jobs — the cheap, minimalist coverage short-term plans offer is attractive. Too attractive, according to Democrats. They’ve long attacked short-term plans, arguing they
“sabotage”
Obamacare by siphoning healthy people away from the exchanges, creating a sicker risk pool and thereby making exchange premiums more costly.
President Joe Biden is looking to eliminate the competition. And approval of his proposed rules would not protect patients nor lower healthcare costs.
Those proposed rules
would undo
a Trump-era policy allowing consumers to enroll in a short-term plan for up to 364 days and insurers to renew it for up to three years. If finalized after a 60-day comment period, the regulations would limit short-term plans to just three months, with an option for an extension of up to one month.
In practice, the policy would force many of the 1.5 million people enrolled in short-term plans onto the exchanges. The Biden administration estimates that restricting short-term plans
would increase
the number of exchange enrollees by 60,000 yearly in 2026, 2027, and 2028. It’s an incremental way to get more people dependent on the federal government for their insurance coverage — and a small step toward Democrats’ ultimate goal of “Medicare for all.”
Biden is already champing at the bit to do another victory lap around Obamacare enrollment numbers. He has achieved “record-breaking” enrollment by paying people to sign up for coverage with
generous subsidies
. Now, he’s hoping to take away the coverage that many people already have and like and force them to buy more expensive, but not always better, coverage through the exchanges.
Those who will lose their short-term plans if Biden’s rule takes effect will surely feel scammed.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM RESTORING AMERICA
Sally C. Pipes (
@sallypipes
) is president, CEO, and Thomas W. Smith fellow in healthcare policy at the Pacific Research Institute. Her latest book is
False Premise, False Promise: The Disastrous Reality of Medicare for All
(Encounter 2020).
