Republicans Can't Repeal Obamacare So Trump Destroys it via Executive Order

Trump and Republicans are destroying the Affordable Care Act and making coverage unaffordable for millions of Americans.  They consider their actions to be praiseworthy despite causing an inability to afford coverage for sick children and adults. 

Trump signed an executive order on Thursday that clears the way for potentially sweeping changes in health insurance, including sales of cheaper policies with fewer benefits and fewer protections for consumers than those mandated under the Affordable Care Act.  Trump will scrap subsidies to health insurance companies that help pay out-of-pocket costs of low-income people...

The twin hits to the Affordable Care Act could unravel [it] sending insurance premiums soaring and insurance companies fleeing from the health law’s online marketplaces. After Republicans failed to repeal the health law in Congress, Mr. Trump appears determined to dismantle it on his own.

The executive order results from Trump's frustration with his inability to repeal the Affordable Care Act even in a Republican-contolled Congress, because as it turns out, healthcare is important regardless of political party. 

Lawmakers from both parties have urged the president to continue the payments.  Without the subsidies, insurance markets could quickly unravel. Insurers have said they will need much higher premiums and may pull out of the insurance exchanges created under the Affordable Care Act....  “Cutting health care subsidies will mean more uninsured in my district,” Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Republican of Florida, wrote on Twitter late Thursday. She added that Mr. Trump “promised more access, affordable coverage. This does opposite.”

But many patients, doctors, hospital executives and state insurance regulators were not so happy. They said the changes envisioned by Mr. Trump could raise costs for sick people, increase sales of bare-bones insurance and add uncertainty to wobbly health insurance markets. Chris Hansen, the president of the lobbying arm of the American Cancer Society, said the order “could leave millions of cancer patients and survivors unable to access meaningful coverage.”

Healthcare is very complex but one of the two issues at hand today is simple.  If you allow insurers to group healthy young people together creating pools that will have low insurance claims, the group that remains is inherently older and sicker (or children who are already sick).  The insurance companies will assess the potential insurance claims of those individuals and conclude they are very high and therefore the insurance premiums must be high to cover those costs.  Thus, that coverage becomes unaffordable.  The entire premise of insurance is to group a broad range of people together to avoid this.  Or conversely, provide our nation with a single-payer system to protect those individuals -- Medicare for all.

Association health plans “cherry-pick health groups,” making it more difficult for less healthy groups to find affordable coverage, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners told Congress this year.... consumer groups and the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, representing state officials, have opposed association health plans....

...most of the changes will not come until federal agencies adopt regulations.... to develop rules that would expand access to less expensive, less comprehensive insurance, including policies that could be sold by trade associations to their members and short-term medical coverage that could be offered by commercial insurers to individuals and families.

...an association health plan can set different rates for different employers, so that a company with older, sicker workers might have to pay much more than a firm with young, healthy employees.

...to find ways of expanding access to “short-term limited duration insurance.”  But short-term policies can limit benefits and charge higher premiums to people who have expensive medical conditions, a type of discrimination banned in policies regulated under the Affordable Care Act.

Some state regulators and insurers greeted the move with alarm and warned that by relaxing standards for association health plans and short-term policies, Mr. Trump would create low-cost insurance options for the healthy, driving up costs for the sick and destabilizing insurance marketplaces created under the Affordable Care Act.

Sources: 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/12/us/politics/trump-obamacare-executive-order-health-insurance.html

http://www.npr.org/2017/10/12/557349927/trump-uses-executive-pen-to-chip-away-at-obamacare