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President Trump Health Care And The 2020 Election
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President, The Commonwealth Fund
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President Trump and the GOP have a number of challenging issues to resolve as the health care debate sharpens ahead of the 2020 election
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As the 2020 election approaches, the president and his party will need to decide whether they support health coverage for all Americans, and for those with preexisting conditions in particular
President Trumps health care gyrations reflect a political fact: he and Republicans have to have a health plan to run on in 2020. Faced with resurgent Democrats touting health care issues, other incumbent Republican presidents have come to exactly the same conclusion.
In 1971, Senator Edward Kennedy, a possible challenger to President Richard M. Nixon, was trumpeting a comprehensive single-payer national health insurance proposal. Nixon struck back with a plan of his own that proposed universal coverage based on a more modest, private-oriented approach. After his reelection, Nixons plan went down under the Watergate avalanche.
Trump is undoubtedly aware from the 2018 midterms that his 2020 health care flank is exposed and, as the saying goes, you cant fight something with nothing. So Mulvaneys promise that Republicans will have a plan of their own makes perfect sense. But Trump faces even greater challenges than his predecessors in shoring up his health care defense.
Publication Details
Where Biden And Trump Stand On 11 Key Healthcare Issues
From COVID-19 to the state of the Affordable Care Act, the presidential candidates offer contrasting visions for the future of healthcare in the United States.
President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden have dramatically different visions for the future of healthcare policy in the United States.
Healthcare, and specifically access to affordable care, has been a topic of fierce debate in recent presidential elections, and remains top of mind for voters this year, in part, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In fact, 29 percent of Americans say healthcare, not the economy, is the most important issue to them, according to a recent Economist and YouGov poll.
With early voting already underway in some states, Healthline spoke with nonpartisan healthcare policy experts to compare where each presidential candidate stands on so voters can make the most informed decision possible when casting their ballot in this crucial election.
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Why Donald Trump Would Have The Same Problems As Democrats On Medicare Drug Prices
Trump has said he doesnt support Obamacare but does believe the government should pay for health insurance for all. I wanna get rid of Obamacare. I want to get you something good, he said at the rally. He didnt offer specifics.
This isnt the first time Trump has taken a health care stance heretical to many in the the GOP. Late last month, he said he wanted to let Medicare negotiate prescription drug prices with pharmaceutical companies. Thats an idea Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have been pushing. Rank-and-file voters seem to like it, but its been anathema to the GOP establishment, which prefers to talk about speeding up drug approvals and spurring competition to bring down prices.
Cruz sees himself as taking a harder line than Trump on health care issues.
We need to repeal every word of Obamacare, Cruz said at a town hall meeting in Portsmouth on Thursday. Cruz is a staunch opponent of abortion, as well as some forms of contraception, but on other health care fronts he pledged to enact reform that keeps government from getting between us and our doctors.
To some Cruz supporters, that sounds just right.
I dont think the government should be able to force you to purchase anything, said Ted Langford of Raymond, N.H., who has committed to supporting Cruz and attended the town hall. He said hes wary of Trump in part because of his position on health care.
Spoiler Alert: Not Well
Robbie GramerForeign Policy
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Healthcare was the hot item du jour in Washington Friday, as the Trump administration forced a vote in the House of Representatives on a miserably unpopular new health bill. As of Friday afternoon, they’re expected to scrap the vote — House Speaker Paul Ryan warned President Donald Trump it would lose — and it will be a political headache for a party that has spent the last seven years waiting for the vote, but apparently forgot to prepare for it.
While the battle plays out on the Hill, heres a snapshot of how the U.S. healthcare system stacks up against the rest of the worlds.
First, the United States spends twice as much per-capita as other developed countries on average, and nearly three times as much as the average for countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. U.S. citizens spend an average of $9,024 a year on healthcare, compared to an OECD average of $3,620 according to the OECDs data on healthcare from 2016. A chart from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation shows the disparity:
While the battle plays out on the Hill, heres a snapshot of how the U.S. healthcare system stacks up against the rest of the worlds.
Robbie Gramer is a diplomacy and national security reporter at Foreign Policy. Twitter:
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Obamacare Is A Catastrophe That Must Be Repealed & Replaced
Speaking at the Iowa Freedom Summit in January, Trump said ObamaCare is a catastrophe that must be repealed and replaced. In 2011, Trump suggested that the health insurance industryhave more ability to cross state lines. In “The America We Deserve” Trump wrote that he supported universal healthcare and a system that would mirror Canada’s government-run healthcare service.
Trump Reverses Course On Vaccinations Now In Favor
“They have to get the shots. The vaccinations are so important.This is really going around now. They have to get their shots,” Trump told CNN’s Joe Johns when asked what his message is for parents.
Trump first weighed in on the issue on Twitter in 2012.”Massive combined inoculations to small children is the cause for big increase in autism,” he claimed.He made a similar argument in 2014, tweeting, “Healthy young child goes to doctor, gets pumped with massive shot of many vaccines, doesn’t feel good and changes–AUTISM. Many such cases!”
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Attention All Women: Trump Is Coming For Your Health Care
Even with a pandemic raging, the president wants the Supreme Court to strike down the Affordable Care Act.
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Ms. Sebelius, a former governor of Kansas, was the secretary of health and human services in the Obama administration.
In the middle of a catastrophic public health crisis, the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to overturn the entire Affordable Care Act. This is dangerous for many reasons but for women, its devastating. They would be stripped of the protections they have had in the decade since passage of the law, known as Obamacare.
Before the law, insurance companies routinely discriminated against women. Those who didnt work for employers that offered health coverage or who werent old enough or poor enough to qualify for Medicare or Medicaid struggled to buy health insurance in the private market, where insurance companies made all the rules.
In those days, insurers could charge women up to two or three times more than men for identical health policies. Women discovered that many of the services and medicines they needed were not included, like coverage for pregnancy, which was not part of most individual policies and was impossible to purchase once a woman became pregnant.
Other coverage made possible by Obamacare would also disappear if the Supreme Court overturns the law.
Kathleen Sebelius, a Democrat elected to two terms as governor of Kansas, was secretary of health and human services from 2009 to 2014.
So Where Does Trump Stand On Health Care
Donald Trump has said a lot about health care, but no one is really sure what it all means.
Donald Trump is pledging to get rid of Obamacare and replace it with the vague promise of something much better, his seven-point plan says as much.
To be fair, Trump is far from the first GOP candidate to avoid specifics when discussing health care policy. Republicans have been talking about repealing and replacing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act every day since it was enacted six years ago, but few have offered concrete plans for how they would do so in a way that does not lead to millions losing the coverage they have gained through the PPACA.
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Factcheck: Opposed Obamacare’s Pre
“All Republicans support people with pre-existing conditions, and if they don’t, they will after I speak to them,” Trump tweeted inOctober. “I am in total support.”
The Trump administration backed Republican-led states in a lawsuit that claims ObamaCare’s protections for pre-existing conditions are illegal, and a federal court ruled the law unconstitutional in December.If the Supreme Court confirms the ruling, insurers would be able to start denying coverage to those people. The White House has not proposed alternative legislation that would offer those with pre-existing conditions the protectionsObamaCare gives consumers. Supporting the concept of health care for people with pre-existing conditions, and supporting legislation that accomplishes it, are two different things.
Funds To Facilitate Healthcaregov Sign
What is it? The ACA created Navigator programs and an advertising budget to help people figure out specifics of the new federally run insurance exchanges and sign up for coverage.
What changed? In August 2017, the administration significantly cut federal funding for these programs.
What does the administration say? “It’s time for the Navigator program to evolve. … This decision reflects CMS’ commitment to put federal dollars for the federally facilitated Exchanges to their most cost effective use in order to better support consumers through the enrollment process.” CMS Administrator Seema Verma,
What’s the impact? It’s hard to document what the impact of this particular cut was on enrollment. The cuts were uneven, and some states and cities got creative to keep providing services. “We have seen erosion in overall health insurance coverage,” Corlette says. “But it’s hard to know whether that’s the effect of the individual mandate going away, the short-term plans or the reductions in marketing and outreach it’s really hard to tease out the impact of those three changes.”
Abbe Gluck, director of the Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy at Yale, cautions that though the law has proven to be stronger than expected, all these actions by the Trump administration have, indeed, had an effect.
Despite that, one of the things that has kept the marketplaces as strong as they are, Gluck notes, is that they’re not all run by the federal government.
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Supports Repealing Mandated Health Insurance
The Christian Coalition Voter Guide inferred whether candidates agree or disagree with the statement, ‘Repealing the Nationalized Health Care System that Forces Citizens to Buy Insurance or Pay Fines’The Christian Coalition notes, “You can help make sure that voters have the facts BEFORE they cast their votes. We have surveyed candidates in the most competitive congressional races on the issues that are important to conservatives.”
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Increase Insurance Competition Across State Lines
One way to infuse more competition into the market is to let citizens purchase health-care plans across state lines.
This could be easily accomplished if Congress got some guts and did the right thing. The U.S. Constitution givesCongress control over interstate commerce. But for whatever reason, the Congress has never exercised this power regarding health insurance. They need to.
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How Much Is Donald Trump Worth
Mr. Trump, famous for telling falsehoods and making inflated claims about himself, has long claimed to be a billionaire. The question of how much Mr. Trump is really worth has been a moving target, and one he refuses to answer. He has continued to refuse to release his tax returns, and its now a battle being fought in the courts.
He has tried to shield his tax returns from Manhattan state prosecutors, an effort that was rejected by a federal judge. The Justice Department has helped his attempt to block a subpoena demanding the release of eight years of his personal and corporate tax returns.
What Is Trump’s Healthcare Plan It Looks A Lot Like Obamacare
- For years, Republicans have lambasted Obamacare, and promised that a full replacement for the Affordable Care Act is in the works.
- But more than 10 years after the ACA was signed into law, no major GOP replacement plan has surfaced.
- Trump’s administration has instituted incremental changes to the landmark healthcare law, and zeroed out the universal coverage mandate.
- Evidence suggests he would do more of the same if given a second term, largely leaving the ACA alone.
- Biden, if elected, would likely usher in a different set of tweaks to the law: he’s floated the ideas of a public option, and more health insurance tax credits available to middle- and upper-class Americans on ACA plans.
President Trump talks a lot about getting rid of President Obama’s landmark Affordable Care Act, which has extended health insurance to 20 million more Americans.
He often says he’ll be replacing that 2010 law with “something terrific” and/or “something great.”
But the truth is that Trump and Republicans in Congress haven’t unified behind replacing Obamacare at all.
Trump’s domestic policy chief Brooke Rollins recently told Business Insider that a backup for the ACA is still “being worked on.”
Ezekiel Emanuel, a health policy expert who was an architect of the original ACA in the Obama administration, is skeptical that any major Republican changes to his legislation are truly in the works.
Perhaps that’s because Republicans don’t really want to get rid of the whole ACA.
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