Trump promises health insurance to all American’s putting him at odds with the GOP
In the Sunday edition of The Washington Post, President-elect Donald Trump told Robert Costa that his plan to replace Obamacare, will include “insurance for everybody.” An embrace of universal health care would mark a sharp break for most Republicans, as they plan to repeal and replace the current health care law.
Trump, wants the Republican Party to know that if they get in his way he will roll over them. He made it clear that he was very aware that a full repeal of the healthcare law, without an immediate replacement would strip health care insurance from millions of Americans.
Trump has no intention is going back on his campaign promise to get rid of Obamacare and make it better. He also will be working on his own plan, while at the same time as seeing what Congress is doing, or not doing to craft a replacement.
Trump did not reveal any details of how he’d accomplish this ambitious challenge, noting that he is waiting for his health secretary nominee, Tom Price, to be confirmed. Price is appearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee on Wednesday, but his hearing before the crucial Senate Finance Committee has yet to be scheduled.
Trump’s promises could also set up potential conflicts between him and his health secretary nominee. Price, a Georgia representative who chairs the House Budget Committee, has authored his own replacement plan that does not have universal coverage as its primary goal.
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Price have unveiled frameworks for replacement plans that rely on tax credits based on enrollees’ age, not income. However, health policy experts have said those credits will have to be generous in order to make coverage affordable. That will be something the Freedom Caucus wing of Republican Party will not allow since they have promised to lower federal spending on health care.
The president-elect is clearly working on his own plan and he has no interest in hearing about plans won’t cover everyone. Trump, is keenly aware of his personal base of voters and he is willing to craft his own plan, just in case he doesn’t like one of the many plans Congress may or may not come up with in the coming months.
Also, Trump will demand that drug companies negotiate directly with Medicare and Medicaid and lower their prices, saying they will no longer be “politically protected.
Many healthcare experts think that Trump’s plan could be something that he often spoken about during the campaign. His plan could very well be the single payer option will serve this idea. It will fund health care for everyone with taxes, freeing Americans from the expensive overhead of profit-based insurance; and it will provide for government control to lower pharmaceutical and other costs.
Trump is aware that if Congress repeals the law without replacing it then it will reflect badly on the Republican’s and also on him. He has warned the GOP that they don’t want to “own,” Obamacare.
The president-elect is very aware that after nearly seven years of vowing to repeal Obamacare, Republicans are fracturing over how to actually go about doing it. Some want to slow down the repeal effort until a replacement plan is unveiled.
We’re going to have insurance for everybody,” Trump told The Washington Post. “There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us.”
“They can expect to have great health care. It will be in a much simplified form. Much less expensive and much better,” he said.
The comments came just days after Congress voted to begin repealing key aspects of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare.
Trump spoke to the issue just two days Republican-controlled Senate voted 51-48 to approve the measures to repeal on Thursday, and the Republican-controlled House voted 227-198 to do the same on Friday, Reuters reports.
Some quotes in this story came from Reuters, ASSOCIATED PRESS, The Washington Post and Fox News.