Most Americans agree that the healthcare system is badly in need of improvement. It’s expensive and difficult to access for some. Insurance delays and a lack of providers also plague the system, which has poorer outcomes than comprobable countries that spend much less on healthcare.
Republicans fought the Affordable Care Act when it was proposed under the Obama administration, and they have tried to get rid of it for decades. However, they haven’t devised an alternative plan.
Now, President Trump and his administration are calling on Congress to enact the Great Healthcare Plan, which they say is a comprehensive plan to lower drug prices, lower insurance premiums, hold big insurance companies accountable, and maximize price transparency.
On the White House Blog, a few general statements are offered:
- Americans will receive the same low prices for prescription drugs that people in other countries pay.
- The plan makes more verified safe pharmaceutical drugs available for over-the-counter purchase.
- The plan stops sending big insurance companies billions in extra taxpayer-funded subsidy payments and instead will send that money directly to eligible Americans to allow them to buy the health insurance of their choice.
- The plan funds a cost-sharing reduction program for healthcare plans which would save taxpayers at least $36 billion and reduce the most common Obamacare plan premiums by more than 10 percent.
- The plan advocates for insurers and providers to disclose pricing, profits, and claim-denial rates in plain English.
Exactly how the plan would work isn’t known.
An analysis by Forbes said:
There was no mention of how much money eligible Americans would receive. Even if every American received $3,000, that would not be enough to pay for a standard silver plan in the Affordable Care Act marketplace. Although rates vary based on income, age and location, an average monthly premium for a silver plan would be somewhere between $450-$600 without tax subsidies. This would translate to $5,400-$7,200 per year. These rates also do not include deductibles, or the amount one has to spend for healthcare out of pocket before insurance kicks in.
Another concern is that Trump’s plan will allow cheap policies with few benefits, including not covering pre-existing conditions, to be sold.
“Trump’s Great Healthcare Plan is impressive only in the fact that it isn’t great, wouldn’t substantively improve healthcare, and isn’t even detailed enough to be considered a plan,” Eagan Kemp, health care policy advocate for Public Citizen, an advocacy organization, said in a statement.
Kemp said Trump and his cronies have had more than a decade to come up with something beyond “concepts of a plan” but have failed time and time again.
“The American people are suffering under a broken health care system that has been made worse by Trump and his MAGA allies,” he said. “By passing tax cuts for billionaires and paying for them through health care cuts for tens of millions of people, Trump and Republicans showed their disdain for everyday Americans.”
Kemp said, in the short run, the Senate needs follow the lead of the House and pass a three-year extension of the ACA subsidies, adding, in the longer term, Medicare for All, an actually great healthcare plan, should be enacted to finally guarantee everyone in the U.S. can get healthcare is needed.
