It’s challenging to see the sunlight at the end of this complex tunnel, but it’s there. More visible today than a week ago.

White House Legislative Affairs Director Marc Short appears on Fox News Sunday to discuss the ongoing efforts to reform ObamaCare. In a very positive shift amid the overall discussion, for the first time the point of the cost on the individual insurance market is brought to the forefront.

CTH readers will note our continuing frustration that 99% of the entire healthcare discussion has centered around medicaid spending, or the state funded subsidy of low-income healthcare coverage.

The vast majority of the most severely impacted people within the discussion, middle-class workers/taxpayers who do not qualify for medicaid, have been essentially locked out of the legislative consideration. It is refreshing to see middle America finally being part of the equation. Within the Senate bill, Ted Cruz and Mike Lee have finally advanced something of value.

The “Consumer Choice Amendment” would allow insurance companies to sell plans that do not follow regulations created under Obamacare, with the caveat that those insurers have to sell at least one plan that adheres to Obamacare’s mandates. The proposal would allow insurers to sell plans with tailored benefits.

(Video Below)

The Cruz amendment doesn’t impact those on medicare or medicaid (mandated types of coverage by government), and follows the basic premise we previously outlined in the parallel approach seemingly structured within the Trump Team’s overall outlook.

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This approach has the hallmarks of a compromise that can meet almost everyone’s needs. Though the sticky parts are always in the details.

(Via Washington Times) […] Several conservative groups said that if they have to live with the Senate bill, it had better include Cruz’s amendment. “If we insist on this half measure, then we should have the amendment,” said Jason Pye, director of public policy for the Koch-backed conservative group FreedomWorks during a call Friday. Cruz had been meeting with GOP leadership on the amendment and said earlier this week he thinks the idea is gaining momentum. But Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., said that there are concerns about sharing the risk between the plans that don’t have to meet Obamacare, which likely would be cheaper, with the plans that do. The amendment would let insurers sell plans that don’t comply with Obamacare’s insurance mandates such as covering essential health benefits and community rating, which prevents insurers from charging sick people more money. But insurers have to offer some plans that do comply with the requirements. The amendment was sent to the Congressional Budget Office as part of the full Senate bill to determine the impact on premiums, the deficit and insurance coverage, according to sources familiar with the matter. The amendment is a compromise between conservatives who want to repeal the law’s mandates and centrists worried about affordable coverage for people with pre-existing conditions. It remains under “serious discussion” by Senate GOP leadership, said Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., in an interview with the Washington Examiner. Meadows is chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, a faction of about three dozen conservative lawmakers. Senate lawmakers are not likely to use a provision sponsored by Rep. Tom MacArthur, R-N.J., a top member of the House moderate faction, that would have allowed the states to repeal many Obamacare mandates. That’s okay, Meadows said, even though the MacArthur amendment was needed to attract enough GOP votes to pass the House. “We have to have either the Cruz amendment or the MacArthur amendment, or something that does a similar thing in reducing premiums,” Meadows said. In an interview with the Washington Examiner, MacArthur said he accepts the Senate approach, which would significantly loosen Obamacare’s existing state waiver requirements. Meadows noted that the Senate bill isn’t likely to change in the House before a vote on final passage. “There is 75 percent chance that whatever passes the Senate comes here for an up or down vote,” Meadows said. (link)

It is not my intention to debate the arguments or merit of legislation, only to point out the logical pathway if people hang tough, support President Trump and stay out of the traps laid by special interests (and their special-interest paid troll army).

There’s a parallel, comparative and representative example of what President Trump’s smart policy team is trying to do with healthcare; it lies within another set of economic policy objectives. However, it takes elevation in thinking to understand the approach.

The comparative example is within the banking and finance industry.

For those who have read all the statements, watched the hearings, listened intently to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, you might have already noted their approach to working around the ridiculously burdensome Dodd Frank regulations within the banking and finance sector. – OUTLINED HERE –

Essentially, instead of trying to untangle all the complexities of decades long DC constructs enmeshing and enlarging the bureaucracy around banking, Trump’s team is constructing a parallel system. Cliff Noted for Brevity:

[…] The goal of a 21st Century “Glass Steagall”, ie. Commercial division -vs- Investment division, is created by generating an entirely new system of banks under different regulation. The currently remaining ten U.S. “big banks” operate as “investment division banks” per se’, and the lesser regulated community banks/credit unions (new), with under $10 billion in assets, operate as would be the “Commercial Side”. Instead of firewalling an individual bank internally within its organization, the Trump/Mnuchin plan looks to be firewalling the banking ‘system’ within the U.S. internally. Hope that makes sense. (read full outline)

Instead of trying to fix a mess of institutional bureaucracy, and nightmarish legislative complexity that might take years, Trump’s “America-First” economic empowerment financial mechanism works around the existing programs by leaving the existing burden of compliance upon the banking and financial entities that created the need for the bureaucracy in the first place; and simultaneously eliminates smaller financial enterprises from those regulations.

As a consequence the lower tier, middle-class financial system, is unleashed and free to operate. This parallel, and much more efficient pathway, is the same approach Trump’s Healthcare Policy initiatives are taking toward the health insurance marketplace.

Stay with me….

Like the financial system, there are too many complex special interests enmeshed within the construct of ObamaCare to generate any reasonable consensus on a one-size-fits-all rebuild. Right now there are legions of paid actors, paid interests, all trying to secure their own individual stake within the aggregate healthcare market.

Big Pharma, Big Labor (unions), Big Corporations (U.S. CoC) and Big Ed (finance and delivery) all have stakes in ObamaCare. That’s a bazillion lobbying interests, representing massive institutional systems, containing trillions of dollars, all simultaneously dispatching their Big Gun Lawyer/Lobbyists to protect their financial position.

♦Unions don’t want health insurance back in/on their liabilities. ♦U.S. CoC Multinational Corporations (Wall Street) don’t want the liability of worker health insurance back on their ledgers. ♦Big Pharma does not want limits to how much they can charge (profits) and they want a small group of decision-makers they can purchase and influence. ♦Big Ed doesn’t want government to lose control over college education subsidies. etc. etc.

{{{Yikes – Piranhas}}}

The initial goal of ObamaCare was manipulatively sold by controlling interests as a program to insure the uninsured, approximately 30 million people (2009). However, that was a farce clearly visible in hindsight. The actual goal(s) were established by all of the aforementioned interests.

Unfortunately, the ObamaCare scheme enmeshed, became self-actual, and weaponized itself -as predicted- against the ordinary middle class American. 150+ million people punished. Essentially, if you are not on medicare/medicaid, or eligible therein, you got screwed on the individual market scheme.

But that’s hindsight. Done is done. That horse has left the barn, rode out of town, and is long gone…. Previous healthcare insurance toothpaste is not only out of tube, but dried, encrusted and licked away by the horse that galloped by… Done is done.

So… understanding the system has self-actuated, Trump’s team has a new approach to reversing the damage to the individual healthcare market similar to the parallel track approach of the economic financial and banking market.

The medicare (federal health insurance) and medicaid (state health insurance) systems will remain the government safety nets for older and lower income populations. [Medicaid income eligibility qualifications in a 0 to 30-50k range depending on dependents.] This should have been the original approach all along; to cover the uninsured by giving them access to medicaid and the entire mess could have been avoided. Alas, that wasn’t the intent of the takeover for all of the aforementioned reasons.

Under Trump’s long-term (3 step) approach – the non-government healthcare market, the majority of the population, will break free from almost all of the ObamaCare government regulations; and the insurance market will be empowered to provide an insurance product that fits the individual needs of the person purchasing the insurance.

The addition of the Senator Cruz “Consumer Choice Amendment” appears to be in line with this approach.

♦Dual System Approaches – Much like Secretary Mnuchin is proposing leaving government (via Dodd-Frank) attached to the “too-big-to-fail” group of banks and cutting all else loose from the regulations, so too is Secretary Price proposing to leave government attached to the “at risk population” (Medicare and Medicaid), the group 99% of all political talking points are structured around, and cut everyone else loose from the regulations.

•Step #1 establishes the ability (decouples ObamaCare) for a parallel market. •Step #2 allows HHS to frame the parallel system (deregulation). •Step #3 establishes the broader parameters for the revised non-government health insurance market.

The House passed their Step 1 version.

The current Senate bill is their side of Step 1.

It’s challenging to see the sunlight at the end of this complex tunnel, but it’s there. More visible today than a week ago.