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This column has been hoping that President Donald Trump would insist that Congress help codify a successful reform from his first term, and now it looks like he just might. This simple yet powerful idea liberates consumers to buy affordable health insurance. Michael Cannon raised the idea in a November op-ed in the Journal, and the plan is to allow permanent access to
low-cost coverage known as “short-term limited-duration insurance.” It’s the coverage consumers want but without many of ObamaCare’s most costly regulations. In 2018 the first Trump administration issued a rule allowing patients to buy this affordable care. But perhaps because avoiding all of ObamaCare’s red tape proved to be popular and cost-efficient, whoever was running the government during the Biden administration issued another rule to block patient access. That’s why Mr. Cannon wants to enshrine the Trump reform in law—to prevent the next progressive administration from unilaterally forcing patients back into expensive ObamaCare. Now this week the president posts on his Truth Social media platform and quotes Mr. Cannon: This is according to Michael F. Cannon, Director of Healthcare Policy at the CATO Institute: “Don’t extend the ObamaCare subsidies — Would be like making ObamaCare permanent. You have to stop talking about it now. Tell Congress, ‘I want to make permanent those Rules that I put into place in 2018, giving people access to ObamaCare exempt planning’… All Congress has
to do is say, ‘Look, the Short Term Plans can last up to 36 months, your Insurer can sell you a Renewal Guarantee so it can last even beyond that period, and you will get lower priced Insurance, better Insurance, Longer Term Insurance and, it doesn’t cost Taxpayers a dime or, it won’t destabilize ObamaCare.’ Much simpler than what President Trump’s advisers are selling him, much better to assuage the fears of nervous Democrats, because we had these Rules in place for six years, and ObamaCare did not crater. Subsidies will not solve this problem…”
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