President Trump’s latest actions on health care – his executive order creating “association health plans” and terminating cost-sharing payments under Obamacare – will further destabilize health insurance markets and create chaos for tens of millions of Americans who need health insurance.
The Trump administration’s lack of a viable strategy for American health care just magnifies the original sin of the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA), which failed to address the root cause of America’s health care problems: Unhealthy lifestyles that account for 50-70 percent of health care costs. Even if Senators Lamar Alexander and Patty Murray broker a short-term compromise to renew insurance subsidy payments, we are only putting Band-Aids on a broken system. Until we address the lifestyle issues creating the need for expensive treatments, costs will continue their rise inexorably.
