No, not by Congress—by a Trump executive order signed today.
President Trump has signed an executive order expanding access to “association health plans”—policies that do not have to adhere to a number of Obamacare rules.
The idea, strongly supported by Sen. Rand Paul, is that individuals with a common profession or interest could band together and be counted as a “large-group” (equivalent to an employer) for health insurance purposes.
Individuals could thus opt out of the Obamacare plans they’re currently enrolled in, and presumably obtain lower rates when they buy into catastrophic or bare bones plans. The consequence of the executive order could be a parallel, consumer-driven system, although one that could be reversed by the next president.
Association plans are regulated under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). Because it will be under ERISA, it may turn out that this option is only open to employed workers, not to non-workers. We shall have to wait and see.
The great advantage here is that “large-group” plans are subject to fewer mandates than under Obamacare – such as having to offer Essential Health Benefits. Large-group plans also have more leeway in setting premiums, which can be based on the health of the group (which is barred under the ACA for small-group plans). Associations that gain large-group status could therefore offer less expensive coverage if they were made up mainly of younger, healthier members.
Most association health plans now in place are considered small-group plans.
The National Association of Insurance Commissioners has gone on record in opposition, arguing that it would “make insurance less available, make insurers less accountable, and prevent regulators from assisting consumers in their states.” This not surprising. State officials do not welcome competition from insurance approved in other states.
It is also unclear if the executive order will withstand legal scrutiny and challenge. Congress could also undermine the effort by refusing to fund changes to existing law made by the executive order.
This is just the start of the process. Several federal agencies have been directed to write rules implementing the executive order, so there will be future opportunities for the public to weigh in on the new regulations. We will keep you posted on these developments.
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When will people truly wake up and realize that health cannot come from our current Allopathic medical system. Health comes from nourishing the body correctly, controlling stress, and avoiding and eliminating toxins. The real problem is that the information on how to do this is not widely disseminated to the public. If it were there would hardly be any need for doctors or pharmaceutical companies. There is simply too much money at stake for this to happen so humanity must learn to do this for itself, or suffer with a system that puts their financial well being before the health of their clients.
First you have to get them to understand “health INSURANCE” is not “health CARE.” A lot of the folks out there stomping their feet for expanding health insurance LITERALLY cannot understand that being forced to pay for health insurance that won’t cover your condition/treatments that leaves you with no money left for an out-of-pocket cure isn’t providing “health CARE.”
this is a revolution that has to start with the individual. until we can change ourselves and the false narratives we’ve been taught, we will not be able to overcome the over-reaching Federal government. what did Ghandi say half a century ago? “Be the change you want to see in the world.”
Correct. Health Care is not a service but a practice by the individual. You can get coaching for Health Care but no-one can provide Health Care.
Health Care: nutrition, toxins elimination, healthy breathing, walking, water, purpose, and meditation.
Problem is it near impossible to eat drink or breath healthy when our government allow min levels of toxic item in our drinking water and food and even the most healthy People can get caner or influenza
Very true. The primary pillars of wellness are nutrition and toxins elimination. The current “healthcare” system basically ignores nutrition and promotes the ingestion of toxins.
Don’t forget: healthy breathing, walking, water, purpose, and meditation.
Depends on where one walks
Especially bare feet walking on natural surfaces
healthcare does not promotes the ingestion of toxins it the GOP that does by lowering emission standards rolling back the clean air and water act cryptic food labels and more
Ever read the ingredients list of any “medicine”? Ever visit the FDA’s website and read the black box warning for many drugs approved as “treatment” for many of the most common ailments?
Association plans for years have been notorious for being a means of exempting plans from state mandates and regulation. In the best of circumstances associations like the American Institute of Architects or boards of realtors represent groups of professionals who are largely self employed and miss out on employer sponsored group plans. It must be hoped these associations are acting in the best interests of their members since they stand in place of state insurance commissions that provide consumer protections. In the worst of circumstances associations like the the National Association of the Self Employed, (N. A. S. E.) market health insurance through their association purposely for avoidance of regulation. If a member subscriber has a complaint they will need to hire a private attorney to pursue redress since they will get no help otherwise.
I remember telling a friend these associations are set up next door to the insurance companies. I meant this figuratively. My friend was working in a high rise office building and noticed that Golden Rule had their office directly next door to the Federation of American Consumers and Travelers, (F. A. C. T.) the association you must join to obtain a Golden Rule policy. So my figurative illustration turned out to be literal in this case.
When I hear arguments from the likes of Rand Paul and Ted Cruz arguing for the sale of health insurance across state lines I wonder just who will be protecting the consumer?
Any group can now get together and offer natural health care and catastrophic cover plan based upon a personal contract to live a healthy life plan at a very low rate. This will become the future where responsible people don’t pay for irresponsible people.
I attempted to join a group with lower insurance rates, though it wasn’t exactly what you are mentioning. Most of my health issues I take care of myself with supplements and very healthy eating. The problem with the plan I’m talking about is there was no inclusion for preexisting conditions. If there was a group like that including the preex. cond., I’d strongly consider it.
When you get healthy you will not have a preexisting condition.
not always true childhood cancer type 1 diabetes birth defects and much and simple as A miscarriage will never leave your records so always a preexisting conditions even if there totally healthy
All caused by poor health preparation by parents. Healthy parents have healthy babies and healthy babies don’t get diseases.
not true as people have about 26,322 genes and the chance both of you do not have some bad genes is astronomically small and the baby combined genes of the mother and father imprinted in the baby may combine 2 bad genes that did nothing in the parents but combining the 2 can do bad things like increase the chance of cancer just as much as 2 good genes doing good things like making you resistance to cancer and there always the chance of a corrupted imprint which can be realty good but in reality mostly bad so while good health and while good life style of both parents does factor in the seeming chaos of genetic imprinting also does
Your compass is centered on gloom and doom.
Best to stay out of the doctor’s sphere- with all the health records.
and then you do not know something is wrong till it to late and if you die from it you do not suffer your family does
Well, I see monthly friends who go in, they THINK something might be wrong, they cut into the person , person get a sepsis, and almost dies.
There are known 30,000 people yearly who get cancer due to going for a CT test – this is a figure from medical world. Better not knowing and going peacefully, than being killed by the system. You ,Magnus, have the right to do whatever you want, and so do I. Lovely. It is my first amendment right to prescribe for myself.
And as a result – I have successfully far outlived my mother, and my father. So really good result for my own family.
That’s true. I’m working on it everyday.
Start with imagining what you will look like when you are healthy and then your creativity will guide and motivate you towards good health.
I’ve just been classified as “an inactive patient” all my records have been returned to local head-office (Ipswich, Suffolk UK), I’m not bothering to sign back on with another poison pusher even though, as one on bog standard state pension + guaranteed pension credit, I’m entitled to a load of free chemical wall-paper; to put it bluntly, until the gvvt. decide to reward people for staying healthy (possibly with vouchers) , ‘they can all get s*****d!!!!!
We do have universal heath care in this country what we do not have is universal preventive care and were cost saving occur as preemptive care cost 1/1000 of what a serous UN-diagnosed contention cost in the hospital
Health Care = nutrition, toxins elimination, healthy breathing, walking, water, purpose, and meditation. You can get Coaching but only the individual can deliver health care to themselves.
As I no longer have GP do know what happens if, Heaven forbid, I should have an accident, end up in hospital & require follow-up treatment: would I need a GP or (as I’m lead to believe) is there a legal requirement that hospitals have to give follow-up treatment even if I don’t have a GP? [Sorry about long-winded nature of this query; maybe you could look into this & put it in your next magazine, which I do get sent from Good Health Naturally]
Email me for ongoing support and solutions.
it good to have a GP as you get older your body can change and so monitoring is so important as it so much cheaper to find and fix an issue early before it become a problem
influenza does not care if your healthy and cancer does care ether nor do your genetics and mental diseases some people have and while eating Healthy decrees the odds they do not eliminate these issues
You are wrong. Both of my parents died in their early 60’s and they ate bad diets. I learned from their failure and I am super healthy in my 70’s and young looking because of my healthy lifestyle. I have hundreds of thousands of followers who follow my plan and clear disease.
How very wrong. Influenza is completely avoidable, and so is cancer. And if one does get cancer, one can get rid of it by natural methods.
You deserve 10 out of 10 for this comment! My Ma does a lot in her slow cooker, very yummy soups & stews with lots of organic vegies, herbs & spices; she’ definitley the Queen of the Slow Cooker!!! Keep saying I’ll get myself one, but then I tend to cadge off my dear ol’ Ma!!
I drastically aultered my very naff dietary regime back in 2004: last bout of flu I had was back end of 2004 & last cold I had was beginning of 2005, so actually dearheart diet nutrition can help greatly in preventing these dis-eases. Re cancer : keep cells nicely oxygenated & your inner workings more alkaline (cancer is a anaerobic condition hence the need for the former)
Doublespeak deserves not to be used. Health is wholeness and vital functionality – and ‘health care’ is doublespeak for weak, fragile in inadequate ‘health’ – and so is sickness promotion and as everyone here knows, sickness management or indeed pharming.
Health is embodies from within, naturally unless conditions block, imbalance or toxify. This applies to our core self-definitions and beliefs. If you live from the belief that your heath is fragile and your are beset with threats that are out to get you, then you reach for all sorts of things that may operate the very toxicity you sought to evade. Fear-defined thinking looks for and finds justification and reinforcement for fear – lives in fear and poisons or deprives itself in fear. So definitions are causative to how we filter and interpret everything. Manipulators think they know this and craft persuasions in ways that operate by stealth. Once the currency is adulterated – the false coin runs a system in which one cannot think anything true – because all the terms are rooted in false framing. Care is used to mean management and this means a processing people. Of course there are still humans beings in any system – so this is not speaking against those who care despite the system.
Medicine has more politics in it than politics and operates a regulatory state capture along with the subverted science that operates as The Authority – regardless what scientists actually discover.
An executive order is not law to anyone except to those taxpayers who are bound by presidential orders, that would be everyone who works for the federal government. That does not include you and me. Those executive orders apply also to that which the president is in control of, such as Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. People need to read the laws of this nation. There would be a lot less sensationalism about stuff like this.
Are my comments being censored? I made a comment on the limits of executive orders and returned to this site to find it gone. The pres can make exec orders but they apply only to federal employees and government territories. Everyone should read up on the laws of the land. They make it sound like he’s a king with a wand announcing a new law. He cannot make laws. Only congress can. Contact your rep, that’s where the action is.
Do I take it you think you live in a democracy? The income your representatives receive, other than their wages from you, would be considered criminal in most democracies around the world. What money? Insider trading, so-called donations, donations to foundations, outright bribes, jobs for family members, promise of money after they leave office, investment in family companies, and on and on and on. Actually, most countries are not really democracies.
No, ours is a form of a republic. Do you know what that means? It means I am an individual and not subject to the government (unless I harm another). You should read some of those founding documents. You’d get a better sense of self. BTW, you changed the subject to money. You are such a sucker and a bait-taker. Those guys sit around trying to get a rise out of and piss someone off all the time. It’s their job. Quit listening to the bs. Quit stressing.
we got of off to any tangents what were taking about here is preemptive care not what you eat or exercise as while those are very important but there personal reasons ability and fiscal limits on that as their are many people without room for a garden live in food deserts and some simply cannot afford to eat well as well as some are disabled and there are those who cannot for mutable reasons but the reason for preventive care is when you get you sometimes you simply do not know it till it near end game and if no insurance they get treatment in the hospitals which cost 1,000 times more