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President Donald Trump made good on his promise to unveil a healthcare affordability framework on Thursday, calling on Congress to enact what the White House has dubbed the “Great Healthcare Plan.”
The pitch, announced by President Trump and the White House, pressures Congress to enact a “comprehensive plan to lower drug prices, lower insurance premiums, hold big insurance companies accountable, and maximize price transparency.”
This comes just two days after the president teased an upcoming announcement on addressing healthcare during a speech in Detroit.
“To provide further relief to hardworking Americans, we’ll also be confronting one of the biggest factors in driving up prices, the monstrosity known as the Unaffordable Care Act,” he said on Tuesday.
The “Great Healthcare Plan” leans heavily into the president’s mission to lower drug prices, which he has made considerable headway on in the executive branch by inking deals with big pharmaceutical companies like GSK, Merck, and Amgen, ensuring Most Favored Nation pricing for critical drugs.
His proposed healthcare framework calls for codifying these Most Favored Nation deals to ensure long-term lower prices for prescriptions for Americans. “The Great Healthcare Plan makes more verified safe pharmaceutical drugs available for over-the-counter purchase,” the White House said.
Another key component of the plan is its focus on lowering healthcare insurance premiums, which have spiked as much as 114 percent since Congress allowed the expiration of the Affordable Care Act’s enhanced premium tax credits in late December.
The president has been consistent in his stance that funding should go to the American people, not the healthcare companies, and that rates must come down. “The Great Healthcare Plan funds a cost-sharing reduction program for healthcare plans which would save taxpayers at least $36 billion and reduce the most common Obamacare plan premiums by over 10% according to the Congressional Budget Office,” the White House noted.
In late December, President Trump alluded to upcoming negotiations with healthcare insurance companies, stating that he would meet with them to attempt to convince them to lower their premium prices, just as he was able to convince Big Pharma companies to lower drug prices.
“With respect to the insurance companies, I want to meet; there’s essentially 14 of them…and I want to say, ‘I want you to cut your rates way down, way, way down,’” he said.
In a video statement released on Thursday, President Trump went into more detail about the proposed plan. “Our plan finally puts you first and puts more money in your pocket,” he stated. “…The big insurance companies lose, and the people of our country win.”
The president touted his work on bringing down drug prices, and noted that, under his proposed healthcare framework, it could bring prices down “80, 90 percent, in some cases.”
“Your prescription drugs will come way, way down,” President Trump reiterated.
He continued, “My plan would reduce your insurance premiums by stopping government payoffs to big insurance companies and sending that money directly to the people. Obamacare was designed to make insurance companies rich…the premiums went higher and higher. I want to end this flagrant scam and put extra money straight into the healthcare savings account in your name, and you go out and buy your own healthcare.”
Further, President Trump said that his proposed plan would end “kickbacks to insurance brokers and corporate middlemen,” and force healthcare insurance companies to publish their rate and coverage comparisons in “very plain English.”
He said insurance companies would be ordered to provide “detailed information about how much of your money they’re going to be paying out in claims versus how much they’re taking in in profits – in other words, you will be able to watch the scam.”
It will be up to Republicans in Congress to take action and codify the president’s proposed healthcare framework.