Among the topics that have been talked about the most within the Trump administration is Obamacare and how much longer it will be around. Throughout the presidential campaign, Donald Trump bashed the healthcare plan and promised to change it when he got into the oval office.
Obamacare, also known as the Affordable Care Act, was surrounded by backlash when it was put into place in March of 2010. The plan’s estimated cost was around $1.4 trillion and the biggest accomplishment so far is the expansion in healthcare coverage across Americans.
Medicare and Medicaid reforms were mainly aimed to help low-income individuals or families that otherwise would not be able to get health insurance. Throughout history, healthcare has been a part of a contract with an employer and the majority of Americans would have their insurance provided that way.
Both Obamacare and reform Trumpcare (officially known in the House as the American Health Care Act) are very complex and cover a lot of areas within the healthcare spectrum. Under Trumpcare, preexisting conditions will be covered. Many people feared that Trump would cut Medicaid from healthcare completely but the latest plans show that its expansion will be frozen.
Obamacare was mainly focused on the people that were not able to get healthcare for multiple reasons and tried to come up with a way to increase the amount of healthcare coverage. The coverage works within a pool system where a group of people with diverse medical history are put together and charged the same premium. This allows a way for the group to pay for the elderly or people with high medical bills because they have the funding from the premiums of a very healthy individual.
“Obamacare is a disaster, premiums are skyrocketing, people are getting less services and the bill is imploding on itself,” junior education major, Robby Jennette, said.
Traditionally, sicker people would have to pay higher premiums because they are more at risk for the insurance companies to cover. A problem with this is the healthy people are being penalized for such and elderly people are relying on their premiums. Naturally, this would encourage healthy people to drop coverage altogether. However, Obamacare included a provision that mandated everyone to have some form of health insurance or face a penalty.
“By eliminating the mandates, the AHCA does free people from the need to purchase health insurance or face a penalty in the form of a tax,” history Professor Dr. Courtney Smith said.
There are mandated items for this insurance coverage that are required across the board. The first regulation is that the insurance companies must accept all individuals into the pool regardless if they have a pre-existing condition. The other rule is that everyone must enroll and purchase insurance coverage. This is the only way to ensure that the community pool structure is successful.
Trumpcare is looking towards the business side of health insurance to make it possible that this is profitable for the insurance companies while still aiding the people. This plan takes away fees for the mandates put in place for insurance companies, which could cause people to drop the insurance coverage if they identify themselves as healthy.
“The new bill keeps government subsidies in place but just renames it to refundable tax credits,” Jennette said. “These subsidies don’t allow for diversity in the free market because the government is basically paying you to choose their plan.”
As for the industry itself, most of the taxes on insurance coverage by these businesses will be taken away. This way, they have a smaller deficit to work with. Regardless of what political affiliation you have, it is clear that this plan shifts the “winners and losers” to different people and maybe these groups of people will be able to handle this plan, only time will tell.
“The Trumpcare bill as it stands will not pass through the senate,” Jennette said.
