Health groups call on states to override Trump ObamaCare order

Health-care groups are urging states to override changes made under an executive order from President Trump, warning the moves threaten to undermine insurance markets.

A coalition of leading health-care groups, including America’s Health Insurance Plans and the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, wrote a letter Thursday to state insurance commissioners urging them to take action to counteract an order signed by Trump in October.

That order aimed to ease ObamaCare rules and opened up cheaper insurance plans that do not have to meet all of the ObamaCare requirements.

But the groups warn that healthy people could be siphoned away into these skimpier, cheaper plans, causing instability and rising premiums in the market for everyone else.

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The letter warns that the changes could lead to “higher premiums for consumers, particularly those with pre-existing conditions.”

Specifically, Trump’s order seeks to expand cheaper, short-term health insurance plans, which do not have to cover pre-existing conditions, by allowing them to last a full year instead of only three months.

The health-care groups ask state regulators to override this change if the Trump administration soon finalizes it in a regulation, as is expected.

“We thus ask the states to act swiftly if the federal rulemaking allows these plans to last beyond a reasonable ‘short term,’” the groups write.