Why Trump's order to allow cross state health insurance sales won't work

Trump's executive order to change Obamacare today is a hamburger bun without the beef, no condiments,  laced with  no taste and  a chunk of poison.

Obamacare has already allowed cross state insurance sales.
It never took off and there are many reasons for it.There are many reasons for it and those same reasons would apply with Trump's executive order.

There is a dirty little secret as well: allowing  small business  and  associations to join together  offer insurance is a sneaky way to offer employees empty insurance without including essential benefits.  The purpose of his plan is to knock the props out of pool of both healthy and the sick and leaving the pool full of the sick.  It is a nasty way to exploit employees as well, leaving them without essential benefits, prescription drug coverage, annual physicals, cancer screenings, blue and pink pills, etc.  This is an executive order that does more than extend cross state purchases.  It is an attempt to change the purpose of the ACA (Obamacare), jacking up the cost of premiums for everyone else who needs it since who would be left are the ones expensive to treat.  It is such a fundamental attack on Obamacare's structure, expect law suits to fly.

The cross state sales portion will probably not be challenged since it is already permitted in Obamacare.  It just won't do much. From a Forbes opinion piece, the industry itself wants to narrow networks and not expand them.   https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucejapsen/2017/10/08/how-narrow-networks-doom-trumps-insurance-sales-across-state-lines/#7e4ea38a35f9.

From my prior blog posting:

 " Buying insurance across state lines is a mirage. The CBO has already scored it as only helping 3 million people more to afford insurance under Obamacare. . Furthermore, under Obamacare, multi- state group plans were permitted, and they never took off. There are reasons. Consumers lose easy appeal if they have a complaint about of state insurers since they would have to register and fight for appeal in the insurer's home state. . Furthermore, big insurers with affiliates in many other states like Blue Cross and United can collude to set prices across state lines since insurance companies are exempted from federal anti trust laws. They could hike prices in other states . Without essential benefits being required, there would be .a full out race to the price bottom of useless, deceptive insurance with few benefits.Expect, too, that the political problem of doing end runs around each state insurance commissions may create another potential opposition group. State Insurance Commissions are long, old political plums and state by state control would be lost. "

Blog posting: 9/271/17 Heads up: GOP's Repeal/replace Obamacare is a cat with 9 lives

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-trump-health-care-executive-order-20171012-story.html