Before attending no less than three separate inauguration balls President Trump signed an Executive Order which is meant to “ease the burden of Obamacare” on businesses and families, while his chief of staff Reince Priebus ordered a regulatory freeze. The order, which notes the new President’s intention to seek the laws “prompt repeal” directs agencies to “minimize the unwarranted economic and regulatory burdens [of ObamaCare] and prepare to afford the States more flexibility and control to create a more free and open healthcare market.” The order also informs agencies that they are to “waive, defer or delay imposing any ObamaCare provisions that impose penalties on states, health care providers or individuals.”

I am not a big fan of Executive orders in general, frankly I think that Clinton opened Pandora’s box when he was in office by signing 364 , which was more than any modern President aside from one. I am of the mind that less power should be consolidated at the Federal level and more at the state level. However I also am not a huge fan of ObamaCare which over the past few years has cost my family dearly, as it has many of my friends and even our writers here at VG.  In the spirit of granting more power to the states, I am hopeful regarding the outcome of this Executive Order since it also grants the states more flexibility by ordering agencies to “bend over backwards in order to ‘provide greater flexibility to States and cooperate with them in implementing healthcare programs.”

Perhaps now we will finally see if the idea of selling health insurance across state boundary lines, which many in the GOP have advocated as a way to bring down premiums for years, would actually work in practice as  well as theory. According to a blog posting on the Hill during the recent Presidential campaign, the authors did not seem convinced that this would achieve not only the stated goal of bringing down premiums, but might complicate access to coverage.

One of the other things about this Executive Order that makes me hopeful is that it also ordered agency heads to  “encourage the development of a free and open market in interstate commerce for the offering of healthcare services and health insurance,” and had the side effect of freezing any yet to be published regulations from ObamaCare that had yet to see the light of day. No telling how many families might have been saved by this order since the first year for the penalty to be assessed against those people who chose not to purchase insurance is 2017 and the last day of open enrollment in January 31st.

Makes me wonder how this gaggle of folks is feeling this evening, after all it was Nancy Pelosi who informed us that we had to “pass it to find out what was in it”. Well Nancy, it seems that we did not like what Obama and the Democrats had to offer. So, now the GOP better step up and deliver.