MISSING: President Trump’s Healthcare Plan

America is growing tired of the unmet promises of a healthcare plan from President Donald Trump as election day is around the corner. His presidential opponent, Joe Biden, has released his healthcare plans, which include plans for Medicare, and polls continue to sway in the Democrat’s favor. We decided to break down some of the President’s more or less, empty promises and connect some dots in hopes to paint a picture of his healthcare plans if reelected. 

Trump said…

“I do want to say that we’re going to be introducing a tremendous health care plan sometime prior — hopefully, prior to the end of the month. It’s just completed now,” Trump said at the time. “We’ll be doing, sometime during this month, the health care plan. And I think that’ll be before the end of the month. And I think it’ll be very impressive to a lot of people.”

On July 19, in an interview with Fox News, Trump said he would be signing a “full and complete health care plan” within two weeks

“We’re signing a health care plan within two weeks, a full and complete health care plan that the Supreme Court decision on DACA gave me the right to do,” Trump also said in that same interview.

“Over the next two weeks, I’ll be pursuing a major executive order requiring health insurance companies to cover all pre-existing conditions for all customers. That’s a big thing. I’ve always been very strongly in favor — we have to cover pre-existing conditions,” Trump said during a briefing at his Bedminster golf club. “So we will be pursuing a major executive order, requiring health insurance companies to cover all pre-existing conditions for all of its customers, said the President on August 7.

No such plans have come to fruition

At the Republican National Convention (RNC), it was expected that the long awaited healthcare plan would be introduced, but the only thing mentioned was what the President had accomplished in his four years in office with zero mentioning of a concrete plan moving forward if reelected. 

What we do know 

Though Obamacare was barely mentioned by Republicans during the RNC, the Affordable Care Act signed into law by President Barack Obama continues to grow in popularity. To be exact, more Americans now have a “favorable opinion” of the ACA at 51% compared to just 36% who had an “unfavorable opinion” of the law, according to the latest Kaiser Family Foundation “health tracking poll.”

Trump against Obamacare

Trump’s healthcare plan has always opposed the ACA and pushed legal efforts to dismantle it rather than coming up with a way to replace it. This is despite the 20 million Americans who gained health insurance under the legislation signed into law in 2010 by Obama, health policy analysts say.

He remains a fervent supporter of rolling back the 2010 healthcare law, an effort he supported in his first year in office when Republicans pushed it in Congress. We do know that his administration is currently asking the Supreme Court to overturn the entire law.

He wants to cut Medicaid

The president has also consistently backed major cuts to federal healthcare programs, including Medicaid. His administration has proposed hundreds of billions of dollars in reductions in Medicaid and tighter restrictions on who can get coverage, saying that the benefits currently offered cost taxpayers too much and discourage people from seeking work.

Lower drug prices?

Through his first term, Trump has repeatedly promised to lower drug prices, a pledge he also made during his 2016 campaign. At that time, Trump claimed to support allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices. Once in office, however, he dropped the idea, which has been fiercely opposed by drugmakers and Republican lawmakers.

With many of his initiatives on drug prices still unfulfilled, the president recently directed his administration to make it easier to import cheaper drugs from other countries and to limit the rebates that middlemen, known as pharmacy benefit managers, can receive when they negotiate prices with drugmakers on behalf of health insurers. Those new efforts would not take effect until well after the election, if then.

Remember COVID-19?

The miracle that would end this pandemic that President Trump promised never came and the coronavirus continues to take American lives everyday. Meanwhile, Trump has only hindered the U.S.’s chances of developing a dependable vaccine, by cutting ties with the World Health Organization (WHO).

If reelected, it remains unclear that the President plans to do anything different in regards to the pandemic. He has continued to call for schools, sports leagues and businesses to reopen and has repeatedly said that he expects the virus eventually to “disappear.” We all continue to wait for that to happen.