Brief #48—Health
Policy Summary
Throughout the Trump Administration’s tenure, there has been an underlying campaign promise: dismantling and destroying the Affordable Care Act. Translation: cutting off healthcare to millions of families. The key policies in the administration have been to expand access to junk plans offered by insurance companies often out of the ACA marketplace, keep preexisting condition exclusion principles in place, and limit the reach of Medicare and Medicaid. Early in November, there was movement to continue to kick people off of Medicare to lower drug costs, which mainly affects the most vulnerable in American society. This movement directly contradicted the majority of people’s opinions on healthcare. Even extremely Republican states (e.g. Idaho) passed by a popular vote increasing access to Medicaid.
Analysis
Ultimately, the midterm success of Democrats supporting more universal healthcare has indicated the slowing of these policies meant to destroy access to healthcare. The Trump Administration and Director of Medicare and Medicaid, Seema Verma, are attempting to reform healthcare to offer more choice of private and public plans to the public. However, this is a terrible method to try to encourage those that can’t afford to sign up for healthcare to sign up. The free market approach to healthcare just ensures that the richest and most privileged in our society have access to adequate healthcare. This is why so many democrats (especially those from Republican majority states) that will be taking office support universal healthcare and ran heavily on that platform. While less people are signing up for the ACA plans, the popular approval for expanding public healthcare could indicate long term success for the ACA. This would hopefully hold true for the 2020 general elections. Ideally, the Trump Administration’s attacks on Medicaid and Medicare will be limited because of their unpopularity, however, there is no question that the effects have already been felt and have hindered the effectiveness of Obama-era healthcare reform.
Resistance Resources:
- National Patient Advocate Foundation-Advocates for and promotes action for supporting Medicare/Medicaid for underserved populations. Volunteer with a center near you help clarify the healthcare process and get people covered.
This Brief was submitted by USRESIST NEWS Healthcare Policy Analyst-Sophia Adams Name: Contact Sophia.lorene30@gmail.com
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