Court deals Trump second blow this week on health care
WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Thursday struck down a Trump administration rule that allows small businesses to band together and set up health insurance plans that skirt requirements of the Affordable Care Act.
The rule is “clearly an end-run around the A.C.A.,” said the judge, John D. Bates, of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia.
The ruling was the second big defeat this week for President Trump on a top-priority item on his health care agenda as he has sought to use the courts to obliterate his predecessor’s signature achievement. Another judge on Wednesday blocked Medicaid work requirements in Arkansas and Kentucky.
Mr. Trump promoted the small-business health plans as a way to save people from the “nightmare of Obamacare.” He told small-business owners in June that “you’re going to save massive amounts of money and have much better health care.”
In the economic report of the president released last week, the White House said the small-business plans — known as association health plans — showed how consumers benefit when the government reduces federal regulations and increases “choice and competition in health care markets.”
But Judge Bates said that the rule authorizing such health plans was unlawful and must be set aside because it “does violence” to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, the framework for employer-sponsored health plans covering tens of millions of Americans.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/court-deals-trump-second-blow-this-week-on-health-care/ar-BBVmQqV
Trump and company are clueless.
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