President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans tried multiple times to jam through legislation that would have repealed Obamacare, left millions of Americans without health insurance, and left those lucky enough to keep it paying larger and larger premiums. It was a very unpopular solution. It turns out people don't like the idea of more expensive premiums? Isn't that surprising? It's almost like the only people who would like that are the vindictive who want to see a signature policy of President Obama's go down in flames regardless of cost, or the super rich who don't care and figure this will all lead to tax cuts for them eventually. Well Donald Trump, being the brat he is, decided that if he couldn't get things through Congress, he was just going to find ways to gut Obamacare himself. Today, he signed an executive order that would eliminate the insurance rules that prevent insurance companies from selling cheaper "skinny" plans that offer less coverage.

Now why is this a big deal? Because, if healthy people are given the option to buy cheap plans that don't meet Obamacare coverage requirements, they will. After all, if you're healthy, you won't be using your insurance as much. The problem is that's a very bad thing. Because the way insurance stays affordable for everybody is for healthy people to be in the same insurance pools as sick people. The healthy people who are not using their insurance subsidizes the cost of the sick people who have to use it a lot. That's the social contract that we enter into that does the most good for the most number of people. And as healthy people tend to eventually, as they age, become sick people, it's a system that takes care of everybody. But President Trump's EO would disrupt the market by eliminating healthy people from those pools, and therefore would drive up the cost of premiums for those who actually need to use their health insurance.

But don't take my word for it. The Washington Post lists some other critics:

Critics, who include state insurance commissioners, most of the health-insurance industry and mainstream policy specialists, predict that a proliferation of such health plans will have damaging ripple effects: driving up costs for consumers with serious medical conditions and prompting more insurers to flee the law’s marketplaces. Part of Trump’s actions, they say, will spark court challenges over their legality.

So most of the health-insurance industry, and mainstream policy specialists, are against this. They seem like a group that knows a thing or two about this world. The result of this executive order will be more shitty health insurance plans which will lead more insurers to leave ACA markets which will lead to millions not having health insurance and skyrocketing premiums. Trump is trying to repeal despite how many times the American people told him and congress they don't want that.

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