(Feb. 10) While the Democratic candidates caterwaul during debates about how rough it supposedly is to gain access to healthcare in this country, President Trump’s policies are actually making the health coverage system better in numerous ways.
Most of what Trump’s team has done involves administrative rules changes or executive orders. They have eased administrative burdens, cut health-related taxes, expanded choices, and improved transparency. Trump even is effectively overturning a ruling by his own Supreme Court nominee, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, to allow people to keep private plans rather than bill taxpayers for Medicare coverage.
The result has been exactly what conservatives long have predicted: Healthcare inflation in the United States is below the worldwide average, and some costs are actually falling. For the first time since 1973, prescription drug costs have not risen, year-over-year, for a full year (late 2018 through late 2019), and indeed fell eight months out of 12. Premiums for basic insurance packages also are falling.
Meanwhile, as part of former House Speaker Paul Ryan’s tax package that Trump signed, Obamacare’s “individual mandate” has been repealed, so people who prefer to save monthly costs and pay out of pocket have the freedom to do so, or to take advantage of expanded health savings accounts that Trump’s policies.
The Democrats would undo all these improvements and go back to the regimented, bureaucratically burdensome straitjacket of full Obamacare, that is if they don’t completely socialize medicine to the tune of $32 trillion.
The public should embrace the direction the Trump team is going in, rather than create the medical rationing that would result from Democratic policies.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/as-democrats-push-radical-health-care-trump-team-actually-makes-it-better
