No Trump Healthcare Plan Exists To Replace Obamacare Even After Eight Years

Experts are highly doubtful about Trump healthcare plan that he pitched as an “affordable health law” but does not seem compelling, they say.

Even after eight years of threats to repeal Obama’s Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as “Obamacare”, the upcoming Presidential candidate Donald Trump does not know where and how to go about it.

Experts are of the view that if they have not seen any progress in his previous tenure, they are highly skeptical that it would happen in his second administration if he is successfully elected.

Where is the Trump healthcare plan?

During the Presidential debate held on Tuesday night with Kamala Harris, Trump said, “I have concepts of a plan” to replace Obamacare and he promised to do it at any cost.

He assured that his team is working on different things and looking into different strategies to come up with the best ever healthcare plan, even greater than the Affordable Care Act. He emphasized that he could not compromise the health of his people and would introduce something affordable at lesser costs and he “would absolutely do it”.

A new Trump healthcare program is now the talk of the town since a more affordable health law is desired more than ever for the US people. With the escalating healthcare prices, United States citizens now have to pay twice as much costs for healthcare as anywhere in the world.

The executive vice president Larry Levitt of health policy at KFF, a nonprofit group, said, “Right now, Obamacare is the status quo in health care. An ACA replacement would involve trade-offs and winners and losers and you can bet that the losers would scream loudly”.

What happened to Obamacare

The Affordable Care Act or Obamacare has successfully provided quality healthcare coverage to approximately 50 million Americans. It constitutes up to 1 in every 7 Americans for the past 10 years. Based on the data for the year 2024, a high record of 21 million people registered for ACA which comprised 5 million new sign-ups for the coverage.

However, sadly, Trump was against his political opponent’s healthcare plan. ACA had to be repealed on April 27, 2020 when the Supreme Court ruled out ACA insurers and became entitled to full payment of the plan. Their creditors had to pay more than $12 billion in accrued claims under the ruling of Maine Community Health Options vs. United States.

What happened to Obamacare then? The administration was severely criticized for the results for which Trump thought he might curb public anger by offering a better Trump healthcare program in the future. The citizens were already sad that Trump did not think of “little people”.

Any options?

A professor of health policy and medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine said that there are various options available at the hands of Republicans in Congress that are great competing ones. Each plan would have its own implications, putting either a relief or a burden on the shoulders of the consumers.

Trump needs to be careful of how he should take things further, especially after he had promised to bring something better on the platter, he remarked.

The future of US healthcare seems dubious

Larry Levitt further explained that US healthcare reforms need a detailed but structured plan that should contemplate reducing healthcare costs. If the government wants to reduce its spending on healthcare then the burden would be transferred to the families, which would increase their costs, Levitt said.

The results would be devastating for the people since healthcare coverage would be out of reach for them and fewer people would be left who would be actually able to pay hefty amounts for insurance coverage, Levitt predicted.