During his campaign last year, US President Donald Trump had promised every American that he will make sure that the existing Affordable Care Act a.k.a. Obamacare and will replace it with a more affordable health care program. Due to the fact that most Americans lose their money from paying every tax imposed to them by every single state, this sure sounds like a very good promise from Trump himself, who was still a presidential candidate during that time. However, economic and political analysts had suggested that the so-called ‘solution’ may or may not be an effective one at all.
Reports have revealed that, after agreeing with the Republican members of the US Congress, Trump had promised to keep the two of the most helpful benefits of Obamacare, namely the provisions concerning the age limitations and also who have pre-existing health conditions. Aside from saying that those people will not be forced to pay for a higher premium healthcare plan, the US Government itself will personally subsidize those who can’t afford the higher premium by giving an additional $25 billion fund to the program.
In addition to the two matters mentioned above, these are some of the issues that will be affected by ‘Trumpcare’ that needs careful observation:
- The Health Insurance companies will suffer once the healthcare mandate is removed. Because of Obamacare’s existing mandate, the health insurance companies have the power to require healthy people to pay for the sick ones by means of additional taxes. This sure sounds good for the citizens but, once the mandate is removed, only those who are sick will be forced to avail health insurance. In this case, companies will be forced to close because of lack of financial profit.
- Sick people will likely to suffer more from higher expenses on higher premiums. Aside from making them pay more, those who are in high-risk pools will be required to get more expensive healthcare premiums in addition to higher deductibles. On the other hand, those who are healthy will likely benefit because of lower taxes.
- The healthcare costs will increase. Even though some health insurance companies can now offer low-cost healthcare plans to those who won’t need the ten essential health benefits that the mandate covers, it will raise the expenses of those who do. In this case, the sick will just resort back to the expensive hospital emergency rooms. In addition to that, once the subsidies by the government are removed, it will mean more expensive individual plan costs.
- The Use of Healthcare Savings Accounts (HSAs) will become available to everyone. As of now, the HSA is only available to people with high-deductible insurance plans. Once repealed, the HSA will be available and can be used by everyone regardless of the conditions.