Congress is in over its head on AHCA

Buchanan, responding to Kind, pointed out that he’s talked to the chief executive officer at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida and heard that Florida Blue has had problems with the ACA. In other words: Buchanan understands that companies actually have something to do with health insurance. Health insurance doesn’t just spawn in cornfields when you spread enough of the right tax credits on them.

At the Energy & Commerce Committee, Rep. Scott Peters, D-Calif., talked about an AHCA tax credit analysis performed by Blue Shield of California.

Republicans occasionally mentioned the loss of Blue Cross and Blue Shields when talking about the problems of their states’ ACA public exchanges.

But terms such as “actuary,” “claim,” “antiselection” and “risk pool” did not seem to come up very often.

The committee members did not seem to be especially conscious of the problem of setting up individual health plans for 2018, for sale on or off the exchange, and that the window for making the 2018 individual market happen, or even for setting up some kind of temporary replacement program, is closing now.

Some people think the federal government should be more actively involved in running the U.S. health care finance system. Some people want to reduce federal involvement.

One acute problem with congressional involvement in the current commercial health insurance system is that the level of congressional health insurance literacy seems absurdly low.

Here’s a modest proposal: If Congress stays involved with commercial health insurance, someone should add a provision to the next must-pass budget bill that requires 20 members of the House and Senate to become active members of the National Conference of Insurance Legislators and 20 to become active members of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. For extra credit: require all 40 of those lawmakers to attend the annual meetings of America’s Health Insurance Plans (and, to be egalitarian: the annual meetings of the American Hospital Association, the National Association of Health Underwriters, the America Council of Life Insurers, and the Consumer Federation of America).

Even without considering the ACA, Congress is really the board of a life insurance, health insurance and retirement annuity company with a significant security operation and a few side investments in the arts, space exploration and park land. Members of Congress should get the background they need to have intelligent conversations about those operations.

Related:

Trump is big unknown on ACA repeal at GOP retreat