A newly released document shows that the Trump administration had secret plans to kill Obamacare regardless of whether Congress took action. The document pre-dates any votes om Congress on the repealing the healthcare law and involved the administration’s use of executive actions to roll back the law.
The document lists 10 executive actions the Trump administration planned to take to roll back Obamacare. They include stricter verification of people who try and sign up outside of the open enrollment period, cutting the open enrollment period in half, and giving states the authority to determine which insurers had to cover Obamacare’s essential benefits.
It also allowed states to build “skinny exchanges.” Exchanges where plans could be sold that didn’t have to adhere to Obamacare’s essential benefits requirements at all. Essential benefits are benefits that Obamacare mandates every insurance policy sold has to cover.
Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) obtained the document last month after blocking three of the administration’s health nominees to get it. Casey then made the list public, calling it a list of options for “sabotage.”
The document was part of a meeting last March between White House officials and conservative members of Congress. The House was about to vote on a bill to repeal Obamacare that conservative House members were reluctant to support because it didn’t go far enough in rolling the healthcare law back.
The White House used to document to show that the bill was just the first step in rolling back Obamacare. Conservatives, though, were unconvinced. House Speaker Paul Ryan was forced to pull the bill from due to a lack of support. Healthcare repeal would ultimately pass two months later in the House.