Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump have different positions on U.S. health care policy, but health care will not play as prominent a role in the 2024 presidential campaign as it did in 2016 or 2020. . In the campaign, leftists proposed a fundamental overhaul of Obamacare, while Republicans called for its repeal.
Harris withdrew from single-payer health insurance.
During the 2020 presidential campaign, Harris’ positions on the future of private health insurance were sometimes confusing. During the 2019 primary debate, Harris raised her hand when the moderator asked candidates whether they would eliminate private health insurance. But soon after, she said, “No, we’re not going to eliminate private health insurance.”
In April 2019, Harris became a co-sponsor of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All bill. The bill would abolish private health insurance and replace it with a single government-run insurance company that would cover all citizens.
Harris announced a health care plan in 2019 that would transition the United States to government-sponsored health insurance over 10 years, but did not eliminate private health insurance.
“As part of this system, we will allow private insurers to offer Medicare plans that adhere to strict Medicare requirements regarding costs and benefits,” Harris said at the time. “Medicare sets the rules for these plans, including price and quality, and private insurers are left to act by those rules, not the other way around.”
During his campaign, Mr. Trump often brought up Ms. Harris’ past support for “Medicare for All,” and said, “A socialist state-run health care plan with high taxes and deadly wait times for all Americans.” Harris was accused of promising to “force the
Harris’ campaign says she would not push for single-payer government health insurance if she became president.
During the debate with Trump, Harris said: “For the last four years as vice president, I have fully supported private health insurance options, but what we have to do is improve the Affordable Care Act.” It’s about maintaining and growing.”
President Trump says he has an ‘idea’ for a health insurance plan
In a debate in Philadelphia, Trump said he would “replace” Obamacare, which Congressional Republicans have largely abandoned in recent years. President Trump and the Republican Congress tried unsuccessfully to “repeal and replace” Obamacare in 2017.
President Trump said, “Obamacare was terrible health care.” “It’s not very good today. And I said, if we come up with something and we’re working on it, we’re going to do it and replace it.”
One of the moderators asked for a simple “yes” or “no” answer. Doesn’t he have a medical plan yet?
“I have a vision for a plan,” President Trump said. “I’m not president now, but if I come up with something, I’ll only change it if I come up with something better and cheaper. And the concept we have to do to do it. And there are options, and you’ll be hearing about it in the not-too-distant future. ”
At the rally, Harris portrayed President Trump’s attacks on the Affordable Care Act as endangering some of the law’s most popular provisions, such as ensuring coverage for people with pre-existing conditions. .
Mr. Trump denies these claims. During his presidency, he repeatedly vowed that Republican efforts on Capitol Hill to replace Obamacare would maintain protections for pre-existing conditions.
Trump struggled to come up with a health care plan during his presidency, sometimes saying he would have one in “two weeks.”
As president, Trump tweeted dozens of times after Obamacare passed, opposing it and calling for its repeal, but the most promising attempt to repeal the law came in 2017 with late Sen. John McCain’s dramatic It failed with a negative vote.
President Trump and the Republican Party have sought to repeal or weaken the Affordable Care Act in other ways as well. In December 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to overturn Obamacare. The application was filed on the same day the government reported that nearly 500,000 people who lost health insurance due to the economic shutdown had signed up for coverage through HealthCare.gov.
In the lawsuit, Texas and other Republican-led states argued that the ACA became essentially unconstitutional after Congress passed the 2017 Trump tax cuts. The tax cuts eliminated the unpopular penalty for not having health insurance, but left in place coverage requirements. The Supreme Court rejected the challenge.
In 2018, the Trump administration suspended risk adjustment payments to insurance companies. This money will be used to provide funding to insurance companies with more severe and expensive patients. In 2017, the Trump administration shortened the enrollment period and closed the federal health care exchanges for 12 hours nearly every Sunday.
Harris wants Biden to continue cracking down on drug companies
In addition to a “crackdown” on drug companies and insurance “middlemen” who are driving up costs, Harris is calling for expanding the portion of the Anti-Inflation Act that covers drug prices.
In 2022, Harris cast the tie-breaking vote on the Inflation Control Act, which would allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices for its more than 60 million members.
The Biden administration has previously capped the prices of many drugs for Medicare patients, including the blood clot drug Eliquis, the heart failure drug Entresto, and insulin. These are scheduled to come into effect in 2026.
Harris supports expanding the law’s caps on insulin prices and copays beyond Medicare, as some in Congress have proposed. Harris also wants to expand the bargaining program and allow Medicare to set caps on more drugs at a faster pace.
President Trump has also promised to lower drug prices, although his campaign recently distanced itself from a proposal he has floated to revive a controversial effort to tie Medicare prices to other countries. It was withdrawn in 2021 amid multiple legal challenges.
President Trump says he wants to make in vitro fertilization mandatory, but Republicans in Congress are not so keen
President Trump has said he wants the government to fund in vitro fertilization (IVF) or require private insurance companies to pay for expensive and intensive sterilization procedures.
Fertility advocates are championing this type of proposal on Capitol Hill. One bill pushed by several House Republicans over the summer would require private health insurance plans to cover the procedure.
But not all Republicans on Capitol Hill necessarily see eye-to-eye with President Trump on making IVF mandatory. IVF is an expensive procedure, costing between $12,000 and $24,000 per cycle. And because women between the ages of 35 and 37 can only use their own eggs to give birth in about 36% of cycles, many couples require multiple IVF cycles to have a baby. For women over 40 who use their own eggs, that rate drops to 8% per cycle.
Senate Republicans have twice blocked legislation that would protect access to in vitro fertilization and require insurance companies to cover infertility treatments, and Senate Democrats voted to draw attention to President Trump’s comments on infertility treatment. Only two Republicans, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, joined Democrats in voting for the bill.
“If Donald Trump and the Republican Party want to protect people’s rights to access IVF, they can vote yes,” bill sponsor Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois told CBS News ahead of the vote. spoke. “He has shown that one word is all it takes, and then Republicans will line up behind him.”
Senate Republicans have reiterated their support for IVF, but say the Democratic bill goes too far. Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Katie Britt of Alabama introduced their own packages this year to protect access to IVF, but Democrats questioned its scope and enforcement actions. This was refused.
Other Republicans, like former Gov. Nikki Haley, say access to IVF is a good thing, but insurance coverage shouldn’t be mandatory.
“Both of my children were products of infertility (treatment),” she said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.” “We want to make that option available to everyone. But the way we do that is not by mandating coverage. Instead, you go and find coverage available. “We want to make sure that we do everything we can to make it affordable.” ”
More than a dozen states and Washington, D.C., already require some private insurance plans to cover in vitro fertilization.
Kaia Hubbard and Alexander Tin contributed to this report.
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