One federal regulation that is due for swift removal by the new administration is a last-minute rule to prevent states from defunding Planned Parenthood. This new rule became final on December 19 following an unusually short 30-day comment period, and was set to take effect on January 18, just two days before President Trump was sworn in.
Obama’s director of the Office of Population Affairs (OPA) complained that 13 states have restricted “certain types” of providers from participating in the federal program to prevent poor people from having children. Is it really the proper function of the federal government to prevent births to poor people? Yet that is the basic mission of the federal OPA. The result is that this new rule was issued at an especially offensive time, during the season when we celebrate the miraculous birth of a child 2,000 years ago.
Perhaps the most influential action that President Trump could take in his first weeks in office would be simply to withdraw the appeal by the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) of a splendid decision that declared illegal the taxpayer subsidies of Obamacare on the health insurance exchanges. If Trump merely withdraws the appeal of U.S. House of Representatives v. Burwell, which is as easy as filing a one-page document with the court, the subsidies would cease and the Obamacare health exchanges would mercifully collapse.
Those taxpayer subsidies are funding abortion in addition to wasting billions of dollars in money that could be better spent on real health care and other good uses. In Alaska, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Vermont, and Washington, it is impossible to buy a health insurance plan on the exchange that does not cover elective abortion.
President Trump could go further and order the IRS not to enforce any fines or penalties for individuals who elect not to purchase Obamacare-compliant insurance. This would allow them to use their own money in ways that best suit their own needs. Nothing is more wasteful and inefficient than a government forcing people to purchase a product they do not want, in this case Obamacare and its funding of abortion.
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