On Tuesday, February 20, the Trump Administration proposed a new health care plan, and administration officials say that the plan will help bring health care costs down for many working Americans. President Trump made his opposition to Obamacare a core tenet of his campaign, and while the Affordable Care Act is still officially the law of the land, the Trump Administration has found ways to work around the laws.
For instance, Obamacare included regulations requiring most health insurance plans to cover certain types of care — called essential health benefits — such as ambulatory services, emergency care, hospital stays, maternity care, mental health and addiction treatment, preventive medicine, and more. While these essential health benefits result in robust plans covering important services, they also tend to drive up insurance premiums. As a result, many opponents of Obamacare want to offer so-called skinny health insurance plans.
Now, a temporary, 12-month plan will soon be offered for those who do not receive subsidies from the government and cannot afford Affordable Care Act regulated health care plans on their own.
How will the new skinny health insurance plans cost less? The new health insurance plans won’t cover as many health care services and treatments as plans offered under the Affordable Care Act. Thus, less coverage will result in lower insurance premiums. It’s likely that these new temporary plans will be more attractive to younger, healthier individuals than they will be to older, less healthy individuals with chronic health care problems. This is because insurers can once again charge more, or even turn away, those who have pre-existing health conditions.
According to ABC News, there are more than 28 million people across the country who are not covered by health insurance. This is a serious issue when so many people suffer from physical and mental health conditions. For example, roughly one-quarter to one-third of adults in the United States have bunion deformities. Approximately one in five American adults suffer from mental illness. Every one in four deaths that occur in the United States every year are due to heart disease. Finally, about 38.5% of men and women in the United States will be diagnosed with some form of cancer throughout their lifetime.
All of these examples simply demonstrate how important it is that people in the United States have access to health care, and that they can afford it. Based on these statistics, it is very likely that many of the 28 million uninsured Americans have health issues, and they are probably not being treated. The Trump administration believes the temporary skinny health insurance plans will give Americans without health insurance coverage more options to receive care.