On Sunday the president tweeted,
You can't compare anything to ObamaCare because ObamaCare is dead. Dems want billions to go to Insurance Companies to bail out donors....New healthcare plan is on its way. Will have much lower premiums & deductibles while at the same time taking care of pre-existing conditions!Do you understand the purpose of those Cost-Sharing Reductions? They're not a bailout of insurance companies; they're payments to compensate them for taking on riskier-than-average clients without charging them more. In other words, they're a key component of how Obamacare achieves coverage of pre-existing conditions.
Do you understand that the Affordable Care Act is not dead so long as those CSR's are continued, as insurers have expressed their willingness to continue offering plans, contingent on being confident that the CSR's will remain in place? This is an entirely reasonable position - to expect insurers to act otherwise is to wish that they weren't profit-seeking companies.
(Of course, the other way for the ACA to die is for Congress to pass a law repealing it, but so far your caucus can't agree on a way to do that.)
Do you understand that providing coverage for pre-existing conditions takes money? The president is promising such coverage while also lowering premiums and deductibles. Imagine you had a potluck and there was just about enough food for everyone, ranging from those with small appetites to those who really like to chow down. And then you said, "Next week we'll have another, but everyone bring less food. And there will still be enough for everyone to eat what they ate last week."
What the president is proposing makes as much sense.
Unless he's planning to have the federal government pick up more of the tab, but every iteration of Trumpcare we've seen so far goes in the other direction.
Or unless he means that premiums and deductibles will be lower for the lucky few, the vigorously healthy.
But then that's a very different vision of society.
I look forward to your response.
Karl Seeley, PhD
Associate Professor and Chair, Economics Department
Hartwick College
Earlier efforts at getting a straight answer that demonstrates either an understanding of health insurance or some simple human concern for the well-being of his constituents:
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