Sen Baldwin: and 30 Democratic colleagues want to block a Trump administration regulation that could

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POLITICS 08/29/2018 08:00 am ET
Senate Democrats Want To Stop Trump From Bringing Back Junk Health Insurance
Sen. Tammy Baldwin says this crusade is personal — and if she can force a vote, she will.
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By Jonathan Cohn
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Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and 30 Democratic colleagues want to block a Trump administration regulation that could flood health insurance markets with junk coverage.

The effort seems unlikely to succeed. It requires passing a bill that would ultimately need support from both the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and President Donald Trump himself.

But Baldwin’s gambit could force her GOP colleagues to declare publicly whether they support this latest effort to undermine the Affordable Care Act’s insurance reforms ― and to do so shortly the midterm elections, amid polling that shows voters care a lot about those reforms.

The impetus for all of this is a rule that the Trump administration had been promising since January and finalized in early August. The rule will make it easier for people to buy and then hold onto “short-term, limited-duration” plans, which, as the name suggests, are supposed to serve as temporary stopgaps for people with brief lapses in coverage.

Short-term policies are exempt from the Affordable Care Act’s rules, which means they don’t have to include benefits like behavioral health, maternity care and prescription drugs that the 2010 health care law deemed essential.