{"id":1072,"date":"2019-07-31T06:19:35","date_gmt":"2019-07-31T13:19:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/?p=1072"},"modified":"2019-07-30T09:40:15","modified_gmt":"2019-07-30T16:40:15","slug":"a-nation-of-laws","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/?p=1072","title":{"rendered":"A Nation of Laws"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We are a nation of laws, not proclamations, despite what our current (and previous) president seem to think. Sometimes laws are passed that enable the executive branch to have some discretion in the enactment of the law. Thus, Presidents and indeed governors can make some policy decisions if the law allows them. When the executive branch acts contrary to a law, we sometimes get the judicial branch deciding just what the law should say. But clearly written laws avoid such a mess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  When Proposition 2\npassed by initiative last November and the Acting Governor Brad Little and\nSecretary of State Lawrence Denney signed it two weeks later, it became the law\nof the state of Idaho. It was a simple law that directed the Idaho Department\nof Health and Welfare to change Medicaid eligibility in Idaho. With this law\npeople who previously could not access health insurance on the Idaho health\ninsurance exchange because they had too\nlittle income<\/em>, become eligible for Medicaid health insurance. The\ninitiative language was consistent with the language of the Affordable Care\nAct, which became federal law in 2010, and still is the law of the land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Six months later the Idaho legislature passed, then Governor\nLittle signed SB 1204 and that became law immediately, April 9th<\/sup>,\n2019. This law had many provisions asking the Idaho DHW to request waivers of\nthe federal government so that Idaho\u2019s Medicaid plan could be different than\nlaid out in federal law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the drafters of the \u201cMedicaid Sideboards\u201d knew they were\nout on a limb. They were warned and considered that what they were asking might\nnot fly with federal statute. They did the honorable thing and included an\nescape clause in amongst their laundry list of waiver requests. Here it is,\nfrom Idaho Code Title 56, Chapter 2:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eligibility for medicaid as\ndescribed in this section shall not be delayed if the centers for medicare and\nmedicaid services fail to approve any waivers of the state plan for which the\ndepartment applies, nor shall such eligibility be delayed while the department\nis considering or negotiating any waivers to the state plan. The department shall\nnot implement any waiver that would result in a reduction in federal financial\nparticipation for persons identified in subsection (1) of this section below\nthe ninety percent (90%) commitment described in section 1905(y) of the social\nsecurity act.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is important for Idaho because this is exactly where the\nstate of Utah finds itself now. Utah passed a similar initiative to Prop 2, but\nthen the Utah legislature did about what the Idaho legislature did and directed\nthe state to ask for waivers to limit the full expansion. The Trump\nadministration has indicated they will deny those requests. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Obama administrators did the same, denying waiver requests\nfrom states who wanted partial expansion or added tough sideboards. Their\nintent was to encourage states to do full expansion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But now, the Trump administration is betting on its lawsuit\nto get the whole ACA declared unconstitutional, as they argued before the US 5th<\/sup>\nCircuit Court of Appeals. A decision on this will be coming in the next few\nweeks. Then it likely will be appealed to the US Supreme Court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But for now, the ACA, and Idaho\u2019s Proposition 2, and the\nsideboards bill are all laws of the land. It was a noble thing for Idaho\nlawmakers to include the \u201cescape clause\u201d in their bid for sideboards and I\napplaud them for that consideration. It is hard to proceed on these shifting\nsands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ACA was a baby step in health care reform. It reinforced\nthe private health insurance industry but did little to control costs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Should the 5th<\/sup> Circuit support the Republican\nargument to repeal the ACA, we will have significant turmoil in the healthcare\nmarketplace. But significant change usually only comes out of turmoil. Maybe\nthat\u2019s what we need, turmoil not tweets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We are a nation of laws, not proclamations, despite what our current (and previous) president seem to think. Sometimes laws are passed that enable the executive branch to have some discretion in the enactment of the law. Thus, Presidents and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1072"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1072"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1072\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1076,"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1072\/revisions\/1076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}