Nevada health exchange director: Trump trying to tie Biden’s hands on way out

The head of Nevada’s state health exchange says the Trump administration is trying to tie the Biden administration’s hands on the way out the door.

Heather Korbulic said every year, the federal government issues a document spelling out the rules for operating the Affordable Care Act. While that normally happens in January or February, this year, Trump’s people issued it in December.

“They’re really rushing to tie the hands of the next administration,” she said.

Korbulic said one of the things in the proposed rule is to allow states to go completely without a state-based exchange and completely without the Affordable Care Act. That would turn the process over to insurance companies that she said would allow them to direct customers to products that don’t meet ACA standards as a qualified health plan and to products that give the companies higher commissions.

She said the Biden administration has some great ideas about expanding the ACA to Nevadans including raising the cap on who can get subsidies from 400 percent of the federal poverty level to 600 percent.

“That would allow so many people to get assistance to help pay for their insurance,” she said.

Korbulic said she and other exchange directors across the country are still trying to analyze not only the new rule issued but the stimulus bill approved by Congress.

Nevada extended open enrollment this year until Jan. 15 and the state is on track to have the same enrollment as in the past couple of years — more than 75,000 people.

She said the arguments at the Supreme Court on whether to rule the ACA unconstitutional were encouraging, leading many to believe that, when they rule this summer, “we’ll probably still have the ACA in place.”

But even if the court throws out the whole act, it would take a long time to unwind and unfold — at least until 2022.

She also pointed out the Biden administration could use “extensive executive actions” to undo the rules written by the Trump administration much as Trump did to undo parts of the act put in place by President Obama.