Today in Obamacare: 17 ways Tom Price can start dismantling the ACA

[flamingdem]

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/2/10/14576558/price-obamacare-executive-action

The Senate confirmed Rep. Tom Price as health and human services secretary very early Friday morning, officially putting him in charge of the agency that will oversee Obamacare repeal and replacement efforts.

Price will need to wait for congressional action to dismantle most major parts of the health care law. But there’s also a lot he can do right this very moment, through executive action. The fantastic Nicholas Bagley and Adrianna McIntyre have done heroic work tracking down 26 separate executive actions that a Trump administration could take. I’ve narrowed those down to 17 that it appears Health and Human Services could regulate on, possibly in joint rulemaking with other agencies (like the Treasury Department or the IRS).

Lots of these would likely face legal challenges from those who would argue that the Trump administration isn’t carrying out the Affordable Care Act as written. How those legal challenges would fare — and how long they would take to resolve — is still quite unknown.

Secretary Price, alongside other Trump administration agencies, may have the authority to:

Decline to enforce the individual mandate. This is arguably one of the biggest executive authorities Price could choose to exercise. In conjunction with Treasury, he could significantly relax federal efforts to collect penalties from people who do not have health insurance, or stop collecting the fees altogether.
Expand or curtail hardship waivers from the individual mandate. The Affordable Care Act allows the HHS secretary to exempt people who would face “hardship” obtaining coverage from the mandate — and leaves Price significant leeway to define what counts as “hardship.”
Striking contraception from the list of women’s preventive services, or eliminating women’s preventive services altogether. The birth control mandate is one of the few Obamacare benefit requirements that Price can strike unilaterally. A full explanation of why is available here.

[Sherman A1]

1. This is what worries me

and the talk of cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Their hands are on the tiller and it's not going to be very pretty.