President Trump announced last week the outline of what he is referring to as “The Great Healthcare Plan.”
According to a White House Fact Sheet, the proposal would codify previous deals between the Trump administration and more than a dozen major drugmakers to significantly lower the cost of certain prescription drugs in exchange for a three-year exemption from tariffs, and allow for more over-the-counter purchases.
The plan would cut billions of dollars in taxpayer funded subsidies to big health insurance companies, instead sending that money directly to eligible Americans. This would allow them to buy a health insurance plan of their choice, as well as cutting kick-backs to pharmacy benefit managers and fund a cost-sharing reduction program for health care plans.
In addition, the proposed plan would create a “Plain-English Insurance” standard that would require insurance companies to publish rate and coverage comparisons in a way that the average person would be able to understand what they are purchasing, publish overhead vs claim payments, require health insurance companies to publish the percentage of their revenues that are paid out vs overhead costs and profits, and display denial rates and average wait time for routine care. Providers that accept Medicare or Medicaid would also be required to post their prices and fees, increasing transparency and preventing surprise medical bills.
The details of the proposal, assuming that the current proposal is passed by Congress, seem to be a step in the right direction and does include several good things, such as increasing cost transparency. However, the current proposal doesn’t go nearly far enough in addressing the issue that we should be discussing, and that is how involved the government is in health care, which is already the most regulated industry in the nation. If we are going to use taxpayer money to subsidize health care, cutting out the insurance industries and pharmaceutical companies and providing that funding directly to the American people would be an improvement over the current system, but the proposal does little to address the real issue, and that is that the government should not be this involved in the health care industry to begin with.
Levi Mikula is an editorial intern at The Heartland Institute.
