The Trump administration on Thursday announced a new “Great Healthcare Plan” to cut drug prices, lower premiums and hold insurance companies accountable. But first, it would have to go through a Congress that’s shown little appetite to take on broad health care reform.
President Donald Trump’s four-point plan calls on Congress to codify his previously announced “most-favored-nation” prescription drug pricing plan and to place money in health savings accounts as opposed to subsidizing insurance costs. The plan also called for price transparency, demanding insurers to “post prices on the wall in plain English - not jargon,” — something insurance companies have long opposed.
It remains to be seen what Congress, which has for months struggled to come to an agreement on how to address expired Affordable Care Act tax credits, will do with Trump’s proposal.
Lawmakers have shown little interest in addressing health care beyond ongoing negotiations to revive ACA tax credits, and even those have been going on for months with no resolution before the Jan. 15 deadline for most ACA users to complete open enrollment.
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Senate Majority Leader John Thune told NOTUS on Thursday that the White House was in touch with his office while drafting the plan.
“It’s consistent with a lot of the things that he wants to get done and a lot of the things that we believe in,” Thune said. “We’ll see how much we can get reduced to legislation and if there’s a path forward.”
Sen. Rick Scott, who proposed his own health care plan in November that did not extend the tax credits and instead expanded access to health savings accounts, told NOTUS that Trump’s new health care plan could effectively tank bipartisan talks to revive the subsidies in the Senate.
“He’s the president, so they can’t pass anything that he’s not going to sign,” Scott said.
He said he has had “a lot of conversations” with Trump on health care and that while he had not read the president’s proposal in full, he expected it would be “very close to what I recommended.”
Trump’s new proposal did not directly address ACA tax credits. A White House official, speaking with reporters on the condition of anonymity, said that looking at the credits would be “looking at a narrow sliver of the individual market.”
Sen. Bernie Moreno, a key player in the Senate talks, said Trump’s plan would not affect the group’s conversations, but represents a next step for negotiators should they revive the subsidies.
“President Trump is talking about a future health care plan that hopefully we can get our hands around,” Moreno said. “The extension of these enhanced premiums is basically a bridge to get relief to people who relied on very expensive health care plan.”
Sen. Lisa Murkowski said she had not read Trump’s plan in full, but had some concerns that it would not revive the subsidies.
“If in fact they do address some of the other priorities that we have highlighted as manageable, as doable, I think that’s going to be important,” Murkowski said. “But obviously the linchpin for our discussions has been surrounding some form of a limited extension.”
The White House official told reporters that the guidance issued on Thursday is a “broad architecture” that the president wants Congress to implement. The official also said that the administration had been working with allies on Capitol Hill on the guidance and that leadership had been briefed, but stopped short of endorsing any existing Republican plans that call for money to be deposited to health savings accounts.
Officials did not respond to questions asking for a specific timeline by which they hoped Congress would act on the announcement.
“There is this fixation with Obamacare and the amount of money that we are giving insurance companies in Obamacare that is constantly the discussion within Washington,” the White House official said. “The president thinks that is far too narrow a view on what is ailing our health care system.”
This article has been updated with additional comments.
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