{"id":8043,"date":"2017-05-25T07:00:53","date_gmt":"2017-05-25T11:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=8043"},"modified":"2017-05-24T18:49:14","modified_gmt":"2017-05-24T22:49:14","slug":"hogans-point-man-on-health-care-wants-to-destroy-the-affordable-care-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=8043","title":{"rendered":"Hogan\u2019s Point Man on Health Care Wants to Destroy the Affordable Care Act"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco.<\/em><\/p>\n

Governor Larry Hogan may be silent<\/a> on the efforts by President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans to gut health care, but his newly appointed Chair of the Maryland Health Care Commission has been anything but silent.\u00a0 To the contrary, Hogan\u2019s new point man on health care has openly advocated for the destruction of the Affordable Care Act.<\/p>\n

Robert E. Moffit, whom Hogan appointed<\/a> Chair of the Maryland Health Care Commission on May 9, will now be playing a critical role in administering Maryland\u2019s health care system.\u00a0 The commission is an independent agency with broad regulatory powers<\/a> over health care providers in areas including IT, data reporting, performance evaluations, certificates of need authorizing new hospitals and expansions and much more.\u00a0 Moffit\u2019s appointment would normally be confirmed by the Maryland State Senate, but since they do not return to Annapolis until next year, Moffit will have plenty of time to make his mark on the state\u2019s health care system.<\/p>\n

And that could be quite a mark.\u00a0 During his tenure as Senior Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, Moffit was a leading critic<\/a> of the ACA, which provides health coverage to more than 400,000 Marylanders<\/a>, and called for it to be repealed as soon as possible<\/a>.\u00a0 Consider his views.<\/p>\n

1. \u00a0In one of many screeds against the ACA<\/a>, Moffit said<\/a> it was experiencing \u201cmulti-organ failure\u201d and that \u201ccentral planning is the disease.\u201d\u00a0 One wonders what he thinks about other \u201ccentrally planned\u201d health care systems like Medicare and the Veterans Health Administration.<\/p>\n

2. \u00a0Moffit wrote that Congress \u201cshould kill the employer mandate entirely,\u201d<\/a> thus leaving employees to fend for themselves in health care as they did before the ACA was passed.<\/p>\n

3. \u00a0Moffit enthusiastically endorsed the GOP\u2019s plan to issue waivers to states so that they could excuse insurers from having to cover pre-existing conditions.\u00a0 In an article entitled \u201cHouse Health Care Bill Moving in the Right Direction<\/a>,\u201d he wrote, \u201cPresident Barack Obama and his allies in Congress should never have imposed centralized federal control over diverse state health insurance markets in the first place.\u00a0 While the best solution would be to repeal that federal overreach, the proposed waiver is a significant improvement over current law. Its practical effect is to achieve a devolution of health insurance rulemaking back to the states.\u201d<\/p>\n

4. \u00a0Just weeks after Hogan appointed him, Moffit cheered on Trump\u2019s budget, which called for $800 billion in cuts to Medicaid<\/a> and converting it into a block grant program.\u00a0 Moffit wrote<\/a>: \u201cBy putting Medicaid on a budget\u2014either through a fixed allotment to the states in the form of a block grant or a per capita cap\u2014the Trump budget would give state officials much needed flexibility in managing the program and better target services to the poorest and most vulnerable of our citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n

5. \u00a0Last November, when criticizing the ACA\u2019s poll numbers, Moffit wrote<\/a>, \u201cWhat \u2018progressive\u2019 politicians want, and their academic and media cheerleaders like, most Americans don\u2019t want or like.\u201d\u00a0 According to Gallup<\/a>, the ACA\u2019s approval rating went from 42% at the time Moffit wrote his article to 55% in April.\u00a0 Apparently, Americans want to have health care after all.<\/p>\n

6. \u00a0Moffit called<\/a> the Republican House bill replacing the ACA \u201ca major improvement over current law.\u201d\u00a0 Yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office found that the House bill would increase the number of Americans without health coverage by 23 million by 2026<\/a>.\u00a0 The office said, \u201cPremiums would vary significantly according to health status and the types of benefits provided, and less healthy people would face extremely high premiums.\u201d<\/p>\n

In selecting Moffit, Governor Hogan has broken his silence on the Affordable Care Act.\u00a0 Moffit\u2019s views are longstanding, well developed and very public.\u00a0 If Hogan had major disagreements with him on the ACA, why would he appoint him to one of the most powerful health care positions in Maryland?\u00a0 Actions speak louder than words, and this action speaks volumes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco. Governor Larry Hogan may be silent on the efforts by President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans to gut health care, but his newly appointed Chair of the Maryland Health Care Commission has been anything but silent.\u00a0 To the contrary, Hogan\u2019s new point man on health care has openly advocated for the destruction … Continue reading Hogan\u2019s Point Man on Health Care Wants to Destroy the Affordable Care Act<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[151,180,1197],"tags":[1545,1896,968],"class_list":["post-8043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adam-pagnucco","category-health-care","category-larry-hogan","tag-adam-pagnucco","tag-health-care","tag-larry-hogan"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-25J","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8043"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8043\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8050,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8043\/revisions\/8050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}