Here’s what you should know about Trump’s plan to take away your healthcare
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it will hear yet another challenge to the Affordable Care Act.
Let’s be clear: In the absence of a real healthcare strategy, President Trump’s plan is to have the courts strip healthcare from millions of Americans.
This case has worked its way through the courts, and Republican politicians have been cheering it on, because they’ve been unable to repeal the ACA in Congress. But SCOTUS won’t make a decision until after the 2020 election. That means the impact of this attack on our healthcare will not be clear when voters cast their ballots. So, it’s important for us to lift up the ways this lawsuit will hurt people.
This case will take up to a year before a decision is reached. But this is not the only way the Trump administration is attacking your healthcare.
Here are six more ways the administration is sabotaging healthcare:
- The Trump budget cut funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and the World Health Organization in the middle of the recent coronavirus outbreak. Two years ago, Trump fired his pandemic response team and has not replaced it. And now the secretary of health and human services won’t even commit to making sure Big Pharma doesn’t have a monopoly on the eventual vaccine. Trump has left America vulnerable to a pandemic like this.
- Although the administration promotes its short-term health plans as affordable alternatives to the ACA insurance options, its plans are largely considered “junk” insurance because they don’t protect people with pre-existing conditions, nor do they cover costly services such as hospital care.
- The Department of Homeland Security recently implemented radical changes to “public charge” immigration policies. The changes will take effect nationwide, except in Illinois where a federal court has blocked them. The new policy directs immigration officials to reject applications from individuals seeking to become permanent residents if they are deemed more likely than not to receive public benefits tied to need, including Medicaid.
- If you need help making an informed decision about buying insurance through HealthCare.gov, it’s no longer available. The Trump administration slashed funding for consumer enrollment assistance and outreach through the ACA navigator program by 80 percent. The cuts mean that consumers are basically on their own to complete the complex application and enrollment process to get affordable health coverage.
- The Trump administration has proposed weakening federal rules that protect LGBTQ people, women, people with limited English proficiency, and others from discrimination in healthcare settings and programs. If the rule is implemented as proposed, more people would likely avoid seeking medical care, fail to get healthcare coverage, not understand their benefits, or not get coverage of benefits they need.
- In another action that erodes protections for people with pre-existing conditions, the administration has invited states to create programs that would let insurers vary premiums and cost sharing based on whether enrollees meet certain health outcomes — a move that effectively would charge sick people more than it would charge healthy people.
