A Short-Term Solution To Our Long-Term Health Insurance Affordability Problems
President Biden hit the road last week to castigate Republicans for supposedly proposing to make healthcare more expensive.
The president is upset that Republicans want to undo the innovation-destroying price controls on prescription drugs included in Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act and rein in the billions of dollars in subsidies he’s handing out to prop up Obamacare’s exchanges.
He’s conveniently ignoring some of Republicans’ own ideas for making health insurance more affordable. In a recent opinion piece, Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas — a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and part of the House Doctors Caucus — and co-author Eric Hargan outlined some of those ideas. Among them is boosting access to short-term and association health plans, both of which tend to be much more affordable than the coverage available through the exchanges.
Short-term and association health plans cost less than conventional health plans because they’re exempt from Obamacare’s many cost-inflating mandates.
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