Trump said Thursday’s move was “only the beginning” and that his administration would take additional steps. He said he would “pressure Congress very strongly to finish the repeal and the replace of Obamacare once and for all.”
Joseph Antos, a healthcare expert at the conservative American Enterprise Institute think tank, said he did not believe the order would have much of an impact.
Health plans would be unlikely to be able to substantially cut costs because employers from regions with lower healthcare costs, like Iowa, would not want to join up with those from regions with higher healthcare costs, Antos said.
“The claim before we saw any of this was that it was going to make affordable coverage available to tens of millions of people. That’s clearly not the case,” Antos said.
Experts also questioned whether Trump has the legal authority to expand association health plans.
Democratic state attorneys general have said they will sue if Trump tries to destroy Obamacare. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said Trump’s executive order is just another step toward imploding the Affordable Care Act.
“It should come as no surprise that California is prepared to fight in court to protect affordable healthcare for its people,” Becerra said.
The association health plans could attract young, healthy people and leave a sicker, more expensive patient pool in the individual insurance markets created under Obamacare, driving up premiums.
The American Hospital Association said Trump’s order “could destabilize the individual and small group markets, leaving millions of Americans who need comprehensive coverage to manage chronic and other pre-existing conditions, as well as protection against unforeseen illness and injury, without affordable options.”
Small health insurers and state insurance regulators also criticized Trump’s move.
Trump has taken a number of other steps to weaken or undermine Obamacare. He has not committed to making billions of dollars of payments to insurers guaranteed under Obamacare, prompting many to exit the individual market or hike premiums for 2018.
The administration also halved the open enrollment period, which begins Nov. 1, slashed the Obamacare advertising and outreach budget, and allowed broad religious and moral exemptions to the law’s mandate that employers provide coverage for women’s birth control.