Donald Trump released a major insurance policy proposal recently. It is a seven-point program, which, Trump says, is an insurance policy reforms that would make America great again. It proposes effective dealing with problems in US healthcare sector, especially to gain mileage over Obamacare.
Trump’s policy refuses access to customers with pre-existing diseases and other conditions which was a major barrier to coverage prior to Obamacare’s coverage augmentation. Trump was quoted saying ‘America must make sure that no one slips through the cracks simply because they cannot afford an insurance coverage’.
In a Republican debate, Trump had promised that if elected he would not let people die on the sidewalks just because they do not have proper access to healthcare insurance coverage.
Base of Trumpcare
However, Trumpcare just like other Republican alternatives has its own share of lacunae.
Trumpcare is founded on some primary policy points as follows:
- Allowing insurance sales across state lines and promoting greater reliability on a health savings account.
- Allowing individuals to deduct premiums from their tax returns. However, this reform makes the policy less popular among the low-income group taxed class who doesn’t have much tax to pay. The question of premium deduction doesn’t make any significant beneficial impact.
- It excludes sick people from access to health insurance coverage.
- It allows a return of underwriting where insurers can charge some subscribers more because they are specially sick, a cancer patient for example.
The commitments
Trumpcare puts forward the following commitments that look like the policy is significant people friendly:
- It completely revokes Obamacare. No one is actually required to buy a healthcare insurance plan unless and until he or she wants to buy it.
- It replaces the current law that impedes the sale of healthcare insurance policies across state borders. So long as the policy traded is compatible with the state requirements, any insurer can market his product in any state. This allows for more competition and the mechanism would pull the premium costs down making the customers happy.
- It allows individuals to completely deduct health insurance premium costs from their income tax liability at the time of submission of returns.
- Under this policy, an individual’s health savings account could be much fruitfully utilized. It encourages contributions to health savings accounts by making them tax-free. The HSA is allowed to cumulate and could be passed on to the inheritor just like property transfer even if the transferor faces capital punishment.
- Trumpcare ensures it would operate smoothly towards customer welfare provided the healthcare providers like the doctors and hospitals are lucid on their pricing policies.
The customers should have a wide option to explore the market and negotiate on the best prices and services. The market turns truly competitive only then. - In the present Medicaid programs, almost all the states offer benefits more than what is actually required. Trumpcare blocks such lavish grants. The states would have the power to locate frauds and miss the utilization of precious resources under the garb of different superfluous healthcare insurance schemes.
- Trumpcare promises to eliminate blockades for drug providers for their access to the free market. Those who bring cheaper and quality products to the customers are allowed unrestricted access to the market.
How it compares to Obamacare
- When compared to Obamacare, Trumpcare isn’t that great but it isn’t bad either. It conforms to the free-market mechanism. Its anti-market plan on prescription drugs makes it a little away off the mark from driving home the significant points.
- While Obamacare puts a legal restriction on the interstate sale of health insurance policies Trumpcare removes such a ban. It welcomes more flexibility in the market that would encourage competition. The public will be fully aware of the good and bad features of all that is offered around compelling the insurers to bring out their best.
- Due to permeability of the sale of policies across state borders, the consumers residing in expensive states have the option of buying low priced insurance packages from inexpensive states. This is a definite win over Obamacare.
- Excluding sick people from insurance coverage in Trumpcare plans is seen as dehumanizing when compared with Obamacare.
- Allowing consumers to deduct health insurance premiums from income tax liability is perhaps a groundbreaking effort that would end the decade-old tax wrap that lets people access coverage through their employer’s tax-free schemes. But it compels everyone else to make a payment from hard-earned post-tax dollars.
Changes in the political scenario often give way to new policies, and Trumpcare is one such proposal designed to replace the preexisting Obamacare.