Before His HHS Nom, Price Had Employer Health Insurance In His Sights

[BeyondGeography]

For years Republican critiques of the Affordable Care Act have zeroed in on the effect it has had on the individual heath insurance market. But the GOP lawmaker who will likely lead the Department of Health and Human Services has long championed a major overhaul to the much bigger employer-based insurance system in order to push consumers to buy their own plans.

The legislation HHS nominee Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) has offered over the years include mainstays of GOP plans that would usher in a drastic change in how most people receive their health care coverage. The employer-based insurance market covers seven times more people than the individual market.

"What he's getting at here, and a lot of Republicans feel pretty strongly about this, to get a functioning insurance market, you have to get away from businesses buying the insurance," explained Joe Antos, a health policy scholar at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute. "The philosophy is, ultimately, you want to transition, in some orderly way, to where everybody is buying their own insurance."

Price's proposal for doing this, via his Empowering Patients First Act, would make employer-plans less financially appealing while incentivizing workers to buy their own plans in the individual markets. It's in the same spirit of Speaker Paul Ryan's Better Way outline for health care reform released last year as well as other GOP proposals, but perhaps is more relevant in that, as actual legislation, it lays down concrete markers. Price, a former Budget Committee chair, has played down his past legislation as he has gone through the nomination process. Nevertheless, his plan highlights the stark differences between the Republican approach to health care and the middle ground sought by the Affordable Care Care.

...An overhaul of employer-based plans, which insure about half of the total population, might be too big of a bite for Republicans, who have hit road bumps even in their initial steps to repeal the ACA.

Antos predicted that capping the tax exclusion of employer-based plans would be "a real stretch politically" during the Trump administration, especially after Republicans claim victory over repealing the ACA's Cadillac Tax.

"Adding a tax, which is what a cap on the exclusion essentially does, that is very difficult," Antos said.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/tom-price-employer-heath-plans

Insanity. Keep voting Republican, people, and someday all their dreams will come true.

[Ilsa]

1. So group buying power would be lessened, and the

$15,000 family policy we have now would cost $20k?