Cramer & Washington Republicans Continue Making Health Care Less Affordable & Accessible
Recent Cuts to Health Programs Make It Harder to Find Affordable Care
Yesterday, the Trump administration announced it was slashing funding to nonprofit groups that provide advice on how to find affordable care, and will push individuals to sign up for health plans that don’t provide basic protections. This action is the latest in partisan efforts to spike health care costs and slash coverage for hardworking Americans. In response, Scott McNeil, Executive Director of the North Dakota Democratic-NPL released the following statement:
“Congressman Cramer and the Washington GOP are trying to score political points, while increasing costs for less care. Whether it’s slashing funding for outreach or reinsurance programs, or backing a lawsuit that seeks to declare coverage for pre-existing conditions unconstitutional, it’s clear that Cramer cares more about appeasing the fringes of his party than working across the aisle to lower health care costs for North Dakotans.”
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Washington Post: Administration slashes grants to help Americans get Affordable Care Act coverage
By Amy Goldstein
July 10, 2018
Key Points:
- The Trump administration is eliminating most of the funding for grass-roots groups that help Americans get Affordable Care Act insurance and will for the first time urge the groups to promote health plans that bypass the law’s consumer protections and required benefits.
- The reduction, the second round of cuts that began a summer ago, will shrink the federal money devoted to groups known as navigators from $36.8 million to $10 million for the enrollment period that starts in November.
- The new reduction of help for navigators, announced late Tuesdayafternoon by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, fits within a pattern of moves by the administration to weaken the sweeping health-care law that President Trump has vowed to demolish.
- Trump and his aides have been taking a series of steps to weaken the law through administration maneuvers. The cuts to grass-roots groups around the country was announced three days after health officials revealed that, because of a pending lawsuit, they were suspending a program created by the law to even out the burden on health insurers whose customers are especially unhealthy or sick.
- The president last fall also issued an executive order to try to make it easier for individuals and small businesses to buy health plans that cost less than ACA coverage because they cover fewer medical services and bypass the law’s rules intended to protect people from old insurance practices in which companies had charged higher prices to women, older people, and those with preexisting medical conditions.
Read the full article here.
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