Updates | The Week of August 14, 2017
Eve Levin // 8/20/17 //
Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke reportedly pressured Senator Lisa Murkowski to vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act, a move that may have violated anti-lobbying and bribery laws, note Cary Coglianese, Gabriel Scheffler and Daniel E. Walters at the Regulatory Review.
The Congressional Budget Office concluded that President Trump’s proposal to cut cost-sharing reduction payments to health insurers under the Affordable Care Act would increase premiums and the federal deficit (Health Affairs Blog, NYT, WaPo).
- The CBO’s analysis is available here.
- States can fund cost-sharing reduction payments on their own if the federal payments are terminated, notes Steven Chen at Health Affairs Blog.
- The Trump administration’s behavior has already led to increases in insurance premiums, writes Steven Rattner at the New York Times.
President Trump committed to make Obamacare payments to insurers for the month of August (The Hill).