Browse by Media Hit and Health Care

“And if both the premium and the penalty are considered a tax, the mandate becomes the largest tax increase in U.S. history. And that doesn't include all of the other taxes imposed by the legislation," reported Merrill Matthews in Forbes.

Regarding healthcare, the Institute For Policy Innovation’s Merrill Matthews writes in The Wall Street Journal that President Trump’s recent executive order to “expand health-insurance options for individuals battered by exploding premiums and fleeing insurers” represents “progress” on health care, but says Congress still needs to act in order to give Americans relief from Obamacare.

To be sure, the scope of Trump's executive order remains to be seen, and there are some who hold that concerns over insurance market bifurcation are overblown. "It's an overstated risk," said Merrill Matthews, resident scholar and health policy expert at the Institute for Policy Innovation. Most Americans get insurance through their employers, Medicare and Medicaid, and Obamacare enrollees who get generous subsidies may decide to stay there. "You're really only talking about the individual market," he said.

A so-called Medicare-For-All plan continues to add left-wing supporters on Capitol Hill but a right-wing critic suspects they wouldn't be part of it.

"They did achieve a decline in the uninsured, but they did it in the worst possible way," said Merrill Matthews. Matthews said he also thinks merely reporting uninsured rates does not tell the whole story as many who gained insurance have been unable to use it because of high deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs they cannot afford.

As the downward spiral quickens, the White House announces it will continue to pay the subsidies and keep Obamacare from crashing until later. Weighing the likely outcome, Merrill Matthews disagrees: “If you’re going to lose anyway, probably best to lose on the side of good policy — and the Constitution — and reject the [subsidy payments].”

Two weeks after efforts in the Senate to repeal Obamacare were thwarted by a few Republican senators, there is talk of another attempt at taking aim at what is officially called the Affordable Care Act.

While the Republican Party's healthcare proposals languish on Capitol Hill, Matthews says the Trump administration has a golden opportunity to broker a historic healthcare deal with Democratic lawmakers, as long as Donald Trump sits on the sidelines. "If Trump assigns cutting a deal to Mike Pence, he may be able to get it done. Trump seems too volatile."

"Probably the best way to stabilize the markets is for states to shift to an invisible high-risk pool, as Alaska and Maine have done," Matthews said. "But it isn't entirely clear how well that works for larger states with multiple carriers. And it isn't clear Republicans will provide any money for that."

Prescription drug costs are a hot political issue, not as much because of the share of the U.S. health care dollar they consume but because consumers pay a larger share of their drug costs out of pocket than they do for other health care.