These things have existed for decades, they skate by because they're short-term, not insurance, and thus not regulated as such. They are obviously not ACA-compliant for all the reasons I already outlined: they're experience rated (discriminate based on pre-existing conditions), impose coverage caps, skimp on benefits, aren't subject to the same disclosure requirements as ACA plans, their rates aren't reviewed, their medical loss ratios are way below ACA minimums, and so on. They are a nuisance and the Obama administration cracked down on them a few years ago. These fraudsters were banned from selling them for longer than 3 months at a time.
The Trump administration has reversed that crackdown and instead is encouraging them, facilitating the hucksters who sell them, and made them the centerpiece of its BS affordability campaign. This is their press release announcing they've opened the floodgates on these junk plans:
Trump Administration Delivers on Promise of More Affordable Health Insurance Options.
These are garbage and Trump is the reason they're flooding the market right now. Refer back to the OP.
Obamacare capped potential out-of-pocket costs for the first time ever. Nobody can pay more than $7,900 out-of-pocket for in-network coverage this year under an ACA-compliant plan. (These short term junk plans Trump is promoting have no such limits--you can be left with $10,000, $20,000, $50,000, a million dollars, whatever in out-of-pocket expenses). Most people buy plans with lower caps than that, and while some plans load all of their-out-of-pocket limit into the deductible many plans do not. (And off course the ACA capped small group insurance plan deductibles at $2,000, but the GOP repealed that provision.)
Aside from Trump's garbage plans with
no out-of-pocket limits, we've already seen the GOP's next best alternative to the ACA's financial protections for people:
GOP Deductibles Too High to Legally Exist
ACA compliance means limiting people's out-of-pocket exposure. If you want to lower the ACA's out-of-pocket cap, let's do it!
Short term plans
do not meet the ACA's minimum requirements. And they have
never counted as minimum creditable coverage for purposes of satisfying the individual mandate.
Serious question: do you have
any clue about what the ACA requires of insurance plans? (Hint: I've already explained it twice.)
If you want to ban short term plans entirely and making sure nothing that isn't ACA-compliant is ever sold anywhere, let's do it!
Which policies are those?
Good lord, open a newspaper or Google "surprise billing." This is arguably the most prominent health care issue being discussed in the country right now, so serious that even the do-nothing Senate has been trying to take it up. There are dueling commercials on how to address the problem on network television. What rock are you living under?
Granted, the surprise billing problem has nothing to do with these particular junk plans but it's a pretty major topic of discussion in this country right now.
Let's do it!
