While Republicans may have tabled plans for a comprehensive repeal-and-replace after the Graham-Cassidy bill collapsed, some healthcare reform concepts never die. Selling insurance across state lines is one of them.
Last week, President Trump announced plans to sign an executive order, among other healthcare-related measures, to allow the sale of health insurance across state lines,
"I'll probably be signing a very major executive order where people can go out cross state lines, do lots of things, and buy their own healthcare and that will be probably signed next week," he said.
The argument for interstate sale of insurance, a plan espoused by many conservatives, is that it would lower costs and increase competition. However, critics dispute such claims. One health policy scholar calls the concept the "" because: "As bad as it is, you just can't kill the damn thing!"
In this video, 51˶ asks Marianne Udow-Phillips, MHSA, executive director for the Center for Healthcare Research & Transformation (CHRT) at the University of Michigan, and Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute, how multi-state insurance policies might be implemented, and whether they would improve healthcare access and quality.