Governors Offer Plan to Keep Obamacare and Fund It More

Published August 31, 2017 9:48pm ET



A bipartisan health reform proposal headlined by Governors John Kasich and John Hickenlooper would preserve Obamacare and instead provide states more flexibility under the existing law, according to an outline of the plan released Thursday.

The collection of ideas, presented in a letter to congressional leaders, focuses solely on the individual market, leaving the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion aside. Kasich, Hickenlooper, and six other governors suggest keeping the individual mandate in lieu of Washington or individual states creating a better coverage enforcement provision. They ask the federal government to do a better job promoting insurance to healthier and younger people. And they encourage the Department of Health and Human Services to streamline waiver requests from some of the law’s provisions, by letting states easily piggyback off each other’s approved waivers.

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