Thursday, March 31, 2016

Donald Trump's Healthcare plan

Trump has a decent health plan.  His Of course completely repeals Obama Care so that people will no longer be forced to buy insurance unless they want to.  He will do basically what Ted Cruz advocated at this point allowing people to buy and sell health insurance across State lines, but so long as they meet State health insurance requirements such as catastrophic care or covering specified conditions by State law.  So it is not complete freedom to buy and sell, but it comes very close.  People under Trumps plan will be able to deduct their health insurance premiums from their taxes.  So if your premium is $4,000 a year or a million a year, the full thing is tax deductible.  He also advocates tax free contributions and inheritable health savings accounts (HSA's).  Trump wants these accounts to accumulate (presumably including gaining interest) and that when they are inherited that no death taxes will be applied to them.  At the same time, the HSA account can be used to pay for any member of the family without penalty.  Now with Dr. Ben Carson's endorsement of Donald Trump, these plans may change slightly to reflect some of Carson's ideas, but this remains to be seen as the overall plan is really just an outline at this point.  

Other changes that Trump wants to do are just as helpful to health care as Dr. Carson's, Senator Cruz's and Governor Kasich's ideas.  Trump wants to implement a true price transparency law that would require health professionals, Doctors, and health organizations like clinics and Doctors to publish their prices for their services.  The goal is to allow consumers to pick and choose the places with the cheapest health prices for the same quality services.  Donald Trump also will block grant funding for Medicaid.  What this means is that the Federal Government that provides financial support for Medicaid will give States a specified amount of money per year for States to spend as they wish on Medicaid patients.  Mr. Trump’s logic is that States know more about the needs of their residents and that States will do a superior job of combating waste, fraud and abuse while providing healthcare to the needy (this idea is shared between all the Republican candidates).  The final part of his plan will open the market to drug providers that "offer safer, cheaper and reliable" drugs.  Basically, this means Drug companies from overseas will be able to compete against domestic drug companies and potentially laws governing generic drugs and patent rights may be adjusted to increase competition.


Final Thought:  Trumps outline of a plan is very solid and does what most of the other candidates want to do and possibly even a little more in areas that the other candidates did not think of trying such as opening the market to overseas drug companies.  I am not a fan of Donald Trump, and I end up about every three weeks saying I would never vote for him.  But then he has stuff like this which can do wonders to help people, and it forces me to reconsider him again and again.  I am still a Cruz guy, but hey if you like Trump for his mind rather than his mouth (and potentially loose morals), then it is possible you will not go wrong voting for this guy.

No comments:

Post a Comment