One of the biggest battles President-elect Trump may have is over how his healthcare plan could be different from the GOP
President-elect Donald Trump has promised that he will repeal and replace the Affordable Car Act (Obamacare) with something better and cheaper. His healthcare plans could put him at odds with the man he just appointed Secretary of Health and Human Services, Georgia Rep. Tom Price, a Republican lawmaker who has been at the forefront of the repealing of the Affordable Care Act.
Congressman Price proposed his replacement for healthcare in this country is a drastic change from the Affordable Care Act . His replacement would roll back the Medicaid expansion, a substantial portion of financial assistance for others getting coverage, and a fair amount of regulation of the individual market.
Price has endorsed the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and then replacing the law, but not retroactively replacing the law which could leave 22 million people without healthcare. Many of those people voted for Trump get their healthcare through Obamacare and the new Commander-in-Chief knows that very well.
Candidate Trump, said he would not allow people to “die on the street,” which, along with his vows not to touch entitlements like Medicare. During his first public interview on 60 Minutes, he made it clear that he would not repeal Obamacare without a replacement that would take effect immediately.
This will no doubt set up a showdown with the most conservative wing of the Republican Party over when President-elect Trump sees as a healthcare plan that replaces Obamacare and the one proposed by the GOP led Congress.
The battleground between Trump and Price is likely to come over how HHS handles Medicaid. President-elect Trump did well nationally with poor people who are on Medicaid or have Obamacare plans. People who were encouraged by his jobs plan in parts of the South as well as the rust belt states like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan.
One example is in Clay County Kentucky, one of the poorest areas in the state, 60 percent of residents who live there are covered by Medicaid. They voted Republican and Donald Trump took a whopping 81 percent of the vote in the country.
Why would a county that relies so heavily on Medicaid and Obamacare vote for a man who is going to repeal it and replace it? Exit polls showed that the people in the county felt that President-elect Trump would make healthcare better with his alternative to Obamacare.
According to a Washington Post report a Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index showed that many of the poor and working-class whites — who voted for Trump in disproportionate numbers — have benefited from Obamacare, meaning they likely stand to lose out from its repeal (and even its replacement with something that covers far fewer people). Gallup-Healthways numbers from earlier this fall showed that overall, the national uninsured rate has plummeted to a new low of 10 percent, a drop of over six percentage points since the law went into effect — which alone is a major achievement.
The report shows that whites without a college degree who have household incomes of under $36,000, the uninsured rate has dropped from 25 percent in 2013 to 15 percent now — a drop of 10 percentage points. It’s often noted that the law has disproportionately expanded coverage among African Americans and Latinos. That is correct, but it has also disproportionately expanded coverage among poor white people.
These people are the ones that voted for President-elect Trump and they are going to want two things from him. One jobs coming back to their cities as he promised and a better, cheaper healthcare plan that he said would be better than Obamacare.
Look for Trump to battle members of his own party to get the healthcare plan he wants not the one that HHS Secretary Price is likely to offer.
Some quotes in the are attributed to the Washington Post and the video is from CNN and CBS.
