LA-Sen: Bill Cassidy (R) Leads Latest Effort In The House To Mess With Obamacare

While Republicans might be realizing that repealing Obamacare will never happen, they can still find ways to mess with it. Tea Party Congressman and U.S. Senate candidate Bill Cassidy (R. LA) is leading the latest effort to mess with the landmark health care law:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/...

Cassidy's bill would allow insurers to keep selling non-Obamacare-compliant plans to employers through 2019, which would largely affect small employers with 50 or fewer employees. The Obama administration has already given the same option to those in the individual market through 2016, after the outcry over the "keep your health plan" controversy last fall.

But the House GOP's latest bill would significantly broaden that so-called "fix" and extend it through the end of the decade. The small-business market that would be affected accounts for at a minimum 17 percent of the covered workers in the United States, or roughly 26 million people. That market is a major focus of Obamacare, remade under its insurance reforms and targeted by the insurance exchanges that opened last year.

Larry Levitt, vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told TPM that the Cassidy bill -- if it hypothetically became law -- would be "quite disruptive" to the small-business market. The Congressional Budget Office had previously estimated that those enrolling in non-compliant plans in the individual market would be negligible in 2016 after the Obama administration announced its "fix." But in evaluating Cassidy's bill, CBO estimated that now 2 million people would be enrolled in non-compliant plans in the small-employer market in 2016 -- with that number set to increase in the following years.

"The idea that non-compliant plans could be sold as new coverage to employers would be quite disruptive to the small business insurance market under the ACA," Levitt said, "since those plans could siphon off younger and healthy groups while avoiding those who have an employee with a pre-existing condition." - TPM, 9/10/14

It's clearly all for show because Senate Democrats will never bring Cassidy's bill up for a vote and Obama said he would veto such legislation. But it's a reminder of how guys like Cassidy, especially if he is elected to the Senate, will continue to find ways to undermine the law. Lets make sure that doesn't happen by donating and getting involved with Senator Mary Landrieu's (D. LA) campaign:
http://www.marylandrieu.com/