Donald Trump in the Oval Office (Image via Wikimedia Commons)
A day after Congress's failure in their "last-ditch" attempt to repeal Obamacare, Trump has announced that he could soon sign an executive order on health care. Specifically, he said that "[he'll] probably be signing a very major executive order where people can go out, cross state lines, do lots of things and buy their own health care, and that will be probably signed next week."
This statement comes in the midsts of Trump's frustration with the failure of the Graham-Cassidy healthcare bill, which is now causing the president to support new insurance reforms being proposed by Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. When commenting on Trump's desire to use executive action to pass these reforms, Senator Paul stated that he believes that "President Trump can legalize on his own the ability of individuals to join a group or health association across state lines to buy insurance."
These new policies would include letting insurers sell their policies across state lines, which in concept is supported by many Republicans but opposed by many insurers, state regulators, and consumer advocates. Essentially, this idea would allow insurers to sell policies in multiple states while only having to meet regulations in their home state; with this, an insurer from a "lightly-regulated" state with policies that offer less benefits and lower premiums could sell their policies in a "highly-regulated" state with higher premiums, resulting in greater profit. Supporters of this policy argue that this would promote competition amongst insurers, but opposers of this idea point out that it would cause the market to split between those who would be forced to remain on more restrictive, comprehensive insurance policies and those who could afford to "skinnier" plans.
Either way, there is no certainty that Trump would be able to change these insurance policies through executive action, as according to federal law, health insurance is regulated on a state level. This being said, I believe that the piece of news covered in this article is closely related to multiple facets of federalism, which is a topic that we have spent a lot of time on in class. The fact that states have the power to regulate these insurance rules is a product of federalism, as although the national government has the power to regulate interstate commerce under the Commerce Clause, they clearly share some of this power with the states, or just delegate this specific power as a reserved power for the states. It will be interesting to see how this situation unfolds, because since the power to regulate these proposed insurance policies is a state power, there is constitutionally not much of anything that Trump can do.
Any thoughts?
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