The countries past health chiefs recently spoke with a message to President Trump and GOP Congress members.
Former U.S. health secretaries recently spoke with a message to President Donald Trump and GOP Congress members, saying that when it comes to the health insurance market stability, don’t make things worse.
Their goal was to try to convince the lawmakers not to unbalance the stability even further.
As it appears as though the Affordable Care Act is here to stay for at least the foreseeable future, the former health chiefs are encouraging the GOP to try to work with what they have. The 2018 open enrollment period will soon begin and private health plans will become available for purchase as of November 1. There are currently 10 million people with health insurance through HealthCare.gov and its various state-controlled counterparts.
As this is the case, the former U.S. Health and Human Services secretaries have asked President Trump and congress to shift their goals toward health insurance market stability. The Affordable Care Act is staying in place, so the best thing the government can do is to focus on stability, not making it worse.
There were three former secretaries speaking on behalf of health insurance market stability.
These former officials included Tommy Thompson, Mike Leavitt and Kathleen Sebelius. They stated that the primary goal for the moment should be, at the very least, to try to assuage the damage done by political and legal uncertainty – driven by President Trump’s tweets – regarding the subsidies upon which consumers and insurance companies rely for deductibles and copays.
The Associated Press reported that focusing on stability and calming the health insurance market situation should be the bare minimum in terms of a focus moving forward. That said, while Republicans Thompson and Leavitt and Democrat Sebelius came together in that message, their opinions regarding other strategies Trump and Congress should use to proceed diverge.
Still, beyond the health insurance market stability, they also all agree that Republicans should use this chance to make their own positive mark on the Affordable Care Act. They all feel this is possible regardless of the fact that, for the present, they have lost their main opportunity to “repeal and replace” Obamacare.
