Brian Schatz: “Back to the Affordable Care Act: [T]he ACA subsidy schemes simply masks these impacts. That is a funny one. The ACA…”

“Back to the Affordable Care Act: [T]he ACA subsidy schemes simply masks these impacts. That is a funny one. The ACA subsidy scheme masks the impacts, which is really to say we have an inefficient healthcare system--I think everybody can agree with that--and what they mean by ``masking the impacts''--right?--is we have a terrible system; under normal circumstances, people's monthly payment would be 5, 6, 7, $900, and under the subsidy scheme, people will have to pay less, masking the impacts. And so just to understand, there are a lot of euphemisms in here for coming after your healthcare. CMS-- Center for Medicaid Services, Medicare/Medicaid services-- should develop a plan to separate the non-subsidized insurance market from the subsidized market, giving the non- subsidized market regulatory relief from costly ACA regulatory mandates. Let's kind of explain what this means for a second. They want to separate the healthy from the not healthy, and the problem is, like, it is true that if an insurer wants to, let's say, only provide insurance for like 35-year-olds and under, that they are going to be able to provide really, really cheap rates. But the problem, before the Affordable Care Act, was that, that is exactly how it worked. So if you were 23, your insurance was reasonably affordable; and if you are 48 and you have heart disease, or you have mental health challenges or you have asthma or you have diabetes, then you have a preexisting condition.…”