Trump Promises “Insurance For Everybody” In Obamacare Repeal
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
Jan 16, 2017
Just two days after both the House and Senate passed a budget resolution clearing the way to repeal and replace Obamacare, the President-elect has told the Washington Post that his replacement bill is nearly complete and envisions “insurance for everybody.” Although no specific timeline was given for the announcement of legislation, the CR passed by Congress last week gives the various committees until January 27th to present a bill. Per Reuters:
“It’s very much formulated down to the final strokes. We haven’t put it in quite yet but we’re going to be doing it soon,” Trump told the Post, adding he was waiting for his nominee for health and human services secretary, Tom Price, to be confirmed.
The plan, he said, would include “lower numbers, much lower deductibles,” without elaborating.
“We’re going to have insurance for everybody,” Trump said. “There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us.”
“It’ll be another plan. But they’ll be beautifully covered. I don’t want single-payer. What I do want is to be able to take care of people,” he added.
Meanwhile, taking a similar approach to his efforts with Boeing and Lockheed Martin to lower costs, Trump vowed to bring down drug prices by forcing big Pharma companies to negotiate directly with the government for Medicare and Medicaid pricing.
Moving ahead, Trump said that lowering drug prices is central to reducing health-care costs nationally — and that he will make it a priority as he uses his bully pulpit to shape policy. When asked how exactly he would force drug manufacturers to comply, Trump said that part of his approach would be public pressure “just like on the airplane,” a nod to his tweets about Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter jet, which Trump said was too costly.
Trump waved away the suggestion that such activity could lead to market volatility on Wall Street. “Stock drops and America goes up,” he said. “I don’t care. I want to do it right or not at all.” He added that drug companies “should produce” more products in the United States.
The question of whether the government should start negotiating how much it pays drugmakers for older Americans on Medicare has long been a partisan dispute, ever since the 2003 law that created Medicare drug benefits prohibited such negotiations.
“They’re politically protected but not anymore,” he said.
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