Donald Trump on Healthcare Reforming

The elected president, Donald Trump, promised to make a quick abolishment and also the replacement of the Affordable Care Act. Trump and the elected Republican Congress are now caught in between a rock and a hard place situation. The promise needs to get fulfilled under any condition. What will he do about the promise?

One biggest problem of health care reforming is to fund all the tax credits or deductions that they proposed in order to help people getting affordable health insurance within the new system. Repealing the Affordable Care Act or ACA means the government will erase billions of dollars for taxes which are used to pay the premium tax credits and also Medicaid expansion. Congressional Republicans delivered repeal bill which sweeps away the Medicaid expansion, subsidies, and also most major taxes such as health insurers, hospitals taxes, high-income taxpayers, and also medical device makers in last January. Luckily, President Obama refused the repeal bill.

Congressional Budget Office reveals that ACA abolishment has the potential to increase the deficit of federal budget by $350 billion until 2025. John Goodman who is a former GOP health policy advisor also states that the savage reality, when the repeal of Obamacare comes to the realization, is there will be no money to provide insurance for all the uninsured. This thing is the reality that Republican is grudging to discuss. Further about John Goodman, he has helped the ACA replacement bill draft in which Rep. Pete Sessions and Sen. Bill Cassidy is the sponsor.

Analyzing the challenges that the Republican faces regarding the health insurance finance subsidiaries; it somehow illustrates possible complexities and also political tradeoffs which are included in the replacement bill. The ACA replacement bill suggests that the elected president, who promised to replace and repeal the ACA as his very first act in the office, should invest lots of time and also the political capital for the healthcare revolution similar to what Obama did on his first year.

According to Christopher Condeluci who was worked as a staff or Republican Senate Finance Committee during the ACA drafting, Trump suggested various options of financing which will likely trigger the anger of groups of powerful stakeholders. The option includes cutting the Medicaid spending by defining the federal contributions, eliminating the expansion of Medicaid, stripping the Medicare spending, and also covering the tax exclusion which is aimed for employer health plans.

Condeluci also further states that the factor which makes the political exercise harder is that the fundraising options of eliminating the tax penalty of ACA due to not purchasing insurance affect fewer people using premium subsidiaries and also drive up to uninsured rate. The CBO also concluded that the repeal bill of GOP in January will possibly leave more Americans for up to 22 million uninsureds. This is certainly not a good thing.

Numbers of observers come to an agreement that Trump administration, as well as Republican congressional, should at least offer financial assistance which aims to help people buy insurance. This is also important to decrease the amount of Americans who potentially lose coverage because of the ACA repeal of premium tax credits.

Lacking of details, earlier this year, Trump campaigns suggested allowing individual health insurance purchasers to completely reduce the premium payments for their tax returns income. This offer should provide modest subsidiary but unfortunately, the most benefits are potent to glide to the groups of people with higher income scale. Meanwhile, Paul Ryan, a House Speaker, and other leaders of House GOP issued a white paper in June offering people with the employer or public coverage lacks a refundable tax credit in a certain amount. The refundable tax credit is determined from the age, not the income and will be able to help those people to purchase insurance.

Even though the tax subsidiary will also be as pricey as the premium tax credits of ACA, but it may still cost billions of dollars for some decades. Both Ryan tax credit and Trump tax deduction may provide quite less help compared to the ACA especially in affordable coverage making for the customers particularly for people with lower income. The best way to pay for the subsidiaries replacement is keeping the ACA taxes because the adjustments are based on the age and geography rather than on income. Therefore, every child will eligible to receive a tax credit for certain amounts.

In addition, people can also use the tax credit to help them buy health coverage by having the employer apply for the health plan at work or simply buy on their own. They can also deposit the money for health saving account which can be used for direct payment for medical expenses. People who currently register in exchange plans of ACA have the choices to keep the plans as well as premium subsidiaries of they can also switch to the tax credit system to purchase coverage.

In an interview before the election, Goodman states that lots of House republicans are open to keeping Obamacare taxes. However, Condeluci doubts that congressional republicans are willing to keep it since they actually have voted the taxes abolishment. He further thinks that Ryan’s proposal of taxes is more likely to serve as a blueprint for the replacement legislation of Trump administration. As Condeluci figured out the ways to revenue for the subsidies of GOP premium, he also wondered whether Republicans actually will to be in deep water of healthcare reform. They will actually expose themselves to the same charge as taking the senior program when they take the money from Medicare. Therefore, any effort to cover employer health plans tax exclusion will also end up receiving the same opposition from labor unions and business.

Perhaps, Republican should have to agree in the tax credits for people with low income if they want to avoid getting a charge. Even though the GOP healthcare can also end up getting as bureaucratic and complicated as the ACA, but there is actually no another choice other than doing this.