Trump’s Pick For HHS Signals He Is Dead Serious About Repealing Obamacare

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Trump’s Pick For HHS Signals He Is Dead Serious About Repealing Obamacare

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-price-hhs-obamacare_us_583d0444e4b06539a78a3d45

President-elect Donald Trump is ready to name an ultra-conservative surgeon, Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), to run the Department of Health and Human Services, multiple media outlets are reporting.
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In Price, Trump would be enlisting one of the few Republican lawmakers who has actually thought about the “replace” part seriously ? to the point of writing a detailed piece of legislation.

The “Empowering Patients First Act,” as it is known, would gut Obamacare’s regulation of insurance plans, reduce the total financial assistance going to people buying private coverage and rescind entirely the law’s expansion of Medicaid for the poorest Americans.

Insurers could resume some of the practices that Obamacare now prohibits ? like selling bare-bones plans and, in some cases, denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. Price’s proposal would offer people tax credits, but there’d be no guarantee the credits could actually pay for comprehensive coverage.

The result, according to one analysis, would be less government spending and regulation ? as well as lower taxes on the rich. Many younger and healthier people would get access to cheaper insurance, particularly if they were comfortable with plans that had minimal coverage or gaps in benefits.

But a scheme like Price’s would also mean fewer people covered and, almost certainly, less financial protection for people with the worst medical conditions.

“It would likely leave many of the 20 million people losing coverage they now receive under the Affordable Care Act without health insurance and going without needed care,” Edwin Park, vice president for health policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told The Huffington Post.

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And Price has said he wouldn’t stop with Obamacare. In mid-November, not long after the presidential election, Price said that Republicans could also use reconciliation to change Medicare, as well.

House Republicans, led by Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, have long called for converting Medicare into some kind of voucher scheme, in which seniors would get a fixed sum of money with which to choose a health plan.

Price has also endorsed transforming Medicaid into a “block grant” ? in other words, giving states a fixed sum of money with which to run the program and then reducing the federal government’s spending on it.
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