When President Trump took office, small businesses and hard-working, middle-class families were finding it increasingly difficult to afford health insurance. The Trump administration already has taken significant steps to help, and Thursday it took another one. A new Trump administration rule will provide an estimated 800,000 businesses a better way to offer coverage and give millions of workers new ways to obtain coverage through the expansion of Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRAs).
| Seeking to show Republicans’ commitment to protecting those with pre-existing conditions, a group of GOP senators led by Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina is reviving and expanding a bill that would retain at least some of the protections built into Obamacare. The move is an attempt to address concerns that the popular and ironclad provisions secured by the ACA may disappear amid President Trump’s renewed drive to overturn the landmark health reform law. It comes as Democrats offer up an array of new proposals for universal, government-backed health coverage. The bill’s introduction comes less than two weeks after the Trump administration said in a federal appeals filing that the entire ACA should be struck down. |
Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said Sunday that the White House plans to release an Obamacare replacement plan before the 2020 election, after hosting top administration officials at Camp David over the weekend for a meeting on health care. “I do think you’ll see a plan here fairly shortly,” Mulvaney said. White House aides and administration officials—including HHS Secretary Alex Azar and Seema Verma, CMS administrator—huddled at the historic Maryland property on Saturday to discuss the general path forward for President Trump’s health care policy, White House aides said. The talks ranged from messaging strategies to lowering drug prices to individual health insurance marketplaces.
There’s a new entry into the rising Democratic debate over wide-ranging overhauls of the US health care system, this one from a House Democratic freshman who flipped a Republican district in 2018.
New York Democratic Rep. Antonio Delgado plans to introduce legislation Monday that would allow all Americans to buy into a version of Medicare — an approach designed to avoid the substantial system-wide overhaul that would come with any effort to create a government-run health care system.
The Trump administration slammed “Medicare for All” in its annual economic review Tuesday, claiming thatcreating a new government-run health care program would be expensive, damage the economy and hurt Americans’ health.President Donald Trump and his top health officials have repeatedly blasted Medicare for All, which several Democratic presidential candidates and lawmakers are backing.”M4A will be neither more efficient nor cheaper than the current system, and it could adversely affect health,” said the report, which is prepared by the White House Council of Economic Advisers, using a shorthand acronym for the proposed reform.
Remember when Democrats promised that if you liked your plan or your doctor you could keep them? Now they’re pushing another bogus claim, accusing Republicans of wanting to take away health insurance protections for people with pre-existing conditions. Here’s the truth: everyone — Republicans and Democrats — support protecting people with pre-existing conditions.