Murray: Trump Administration Offers “How-to Guide for Health Care Sabotage”

Trump Administration reveals templates showing states how to apply for permission to flout patient protections under new guidance for 1332 waivers

Last month the Trump Administration issued a new guidance that warped 1332 waivers by weakening enforcement of the guardrails for the program and undermined protections for people with pre-existing conditions

Murray and other Democratic Leaders have urged the Trump Administration to reverse course and warned the new guidance is inconsistent with congressional intent

Murray: “These new templates are nothing more than a how-to guide for health care sabotage.”

Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Ranking Member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, put out the following statement in response to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ release of new templates of 1332 waiver program applications that show states what an acceptable application looks like under the Trump administration’s recently issued guidance weakening enforcement of the guardrails for the program.

“These new templates are nothing more than a how-to guide for health care sabotage. The Trump administration is brazenly warping a tool meant to help states innovate and lower prices so it can further gut protections for people with pre-existing conditions and drive up health care costs. Congress created these waivers and included guardrails to allow for innovation while making sure people could get high-quality, affordable coverage—however the Trump Administration’s guidance takes us in the opposite direction.

“People across the country have clearly and repeatedly rejected President Trump’s health care sabotage agenda, so I hope Republicans will finally reject it as well and come back to the negotiating table to work with Democrats in a bipartisan way to lower health care costs.”

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