The Presidential election is right around the corner and each candidate is pushing their agenda now more than ever. A main focus will be on candidates such as Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Mike Bloomberg, and Pete Buttigieg. From topics such as tax reforms to military spending, one of the most important topics is healthcare. The last four years allowed people a chance to see what President Trump would, or could have, achieve in his position. As we go into the election it should be easy enough to form an opinion on President Trump’s healthcare policy. However, as it wasn’t much of a topic between his many scandals this blog post will be used to cover his healthcare stance and what he has done during his time.
President Trump is running for reelection but unlike the last time he did, this time he has a record that the people can look at to decide if he should continue on. For the four years he has been in office his healthcare policies have not been much talk because he had bigger scandals to deal with. That doesn’t mean things weren’t happening. In a tweet in 2017 President Trump called Obamacare, “a broken mess.” I remember his presidential campaign and how he thought Obamacare was an abomination, saying that when he was elected to the office, he would reform the healthcare system. Trump made five major changes to Obamacare and has cut a large portion of funding for the proposed 2021 budget.
Beginning with the changes to Obamacare, five parts matter. Number one: the individual mandate requirement has been eliminated. The original requirement was that all US residents had to have healthcare or pay a fine. With the elimination of the individual mandate there will be no fine, people will pay $0. Of course, actions have consequences and one of these was a rise in insurance premiums. Insurance companies believe that healthy people won’t want to pay for insurance anymore, so they raised their prices. Sick individuals will now have to pay more for health insurance. The second change to Obamacare, is that states are allowed to add the work requirement to Medicaid. In my previous blog I discussed what the difference was between Medicare and Medicaid. Medicaid provides healthcare for millions of people who wouldn’t necessarily be able to afford health insurance. However, with this change people will be kicked off of Medicaid because they might not be able to fulfill the work requirement. Thousands of people could be kicked off, but what does the government care about people’s health. As long as women’s reproductive policies are being regulated by a man then the rest of the country can suffer in silence. The third change is cost sharing reduction subsidies to insurers have ended. Any assistance from the federal government to help insurance companies stay in the ACA will be no longer. Again, there were consequences to this change, and they were that the government will still pay but in another way. It is complicated but at its basics insurance companies now have a way of making the federal government pay more. The fourth change is access to short-term plans that have been expanded. Short term plans usually last between three months to just under one full year. This ruling will allow short term plans to be renewable for up to three years. If a person were to get into a serious accident on one of the short term plans, they could be without insurance if it expires while they’re in the hospital. Bad for them because they would be facing all their medical debts alone. The fifth, and final, big change to Obamacare is the cut in funds used to facilitate HealthCare.gov sign-ups. People need help figuring out what plans they qualify under to sign up correctly but with this new cut they are now on their own. Some states have tried to continue to fund the program themselves because they want the ACA to continue to stay steady through Trump’s remaining time as president.
Site Title 