Russian asset Donald Trump's Affordable Care Act sabotage isn't working out so well, particularly for fellow elected Republicans who are facing a very angry electorate which wants to keep its insurance. One of Trump's efforts has backfired almost completely—his idea for skimpy, cheap association health plans. The business groups who originally lobbied for it have decided they hate it and aren't adopting it. And now it's drawn a lawsuit from 11 states and Washington, D.C.
New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood (D) and Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey (D) are leading the suit, using our old friend the Administrative Procedures Act—that was the basis for a so-far successful challenge to Kentucky's Medicaid work requirements and to Montana's challenge to a new dark money rule. In this case, the attorneys general argue that the rule establishing these health plans "upends a decades-old understanding of a foundational employee benefits law for the purpose of exempting a significant portion of the health insurance market from the Affordable Care Act’s consumer protections."
The other states participating are California, Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, New Jersey, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Washington. They assert that the new plans "would undo critical federal consumer protections and unduly expand access to AHPs without sufficient justification or consideration of the consequences." It also "increases the risk of fraud and harm to consumers, requires states to redirect significant enforcement resources to curb those risks, and jeopardizes state efforts to protect their residents through stronger regulation."
All of which is true and is in fact the intent of the AHP rule, for all that the administration touts "freedom" and low cost. The plans would draw healthy people out of the larger individual market pools, driving costs up for those in the Obamacare markets. But the people in those plans would not have the protections in the ACA, so if they were to get sick or be in a catastrophic accident, they'd be out of luck. Just like before the ACA. Just like Trump wants it to be.
That, as the state argue, the administration did not do due process to determine how to make the rule work is evidenced by its reception in the business community. It's not going to work for them because there's too much in it that's simply unworkable. That's what happens with an administration that doesn't care about policy, but just wants to take a sledge hammer to whatever President Obama did, simply for the sake of destroying it.