Many of our Medicare Coach Members are asking, how will Donald Trump’s proposed repeal of Obamacare affect their Medicare benefits already granted under the Affordable Care Act (ACA)?
It’s too early to tell, but once seniors are given additional benefits, it will be difficult for President elect Trump or members of Congress to take them away.
The ACA added more benefits to Medicare than any other single issue within the law. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), beneficiaries are expected to save on average, about $4,200 per person or about $2.3 billion dollars over a ten year period beginning in 2006 due to lower drug costs, free preventive services and reductions in health spending.
Medicare now covers more than 22 preventive services like mammograms or colonoscopies without charging you for the Part B coinsurance deductible. Seniors save money on brand-name drugs amounting to billions of dollars with the closing of the Gap or donut hole where before the ACA they were paying 100 percent.
The donut hole will be closed completely by 2020 under Part D of Medicare when beneficiaries will pay a maximum of 25 percent of their portion for prescriptions.
Donald Trump even stunned Republicans prior to his election by saying Medicare drug prices should be negotiated to lower costs because politicians are “beholden to the pharmaceutical industry” with their campaign contributions.
Trump has called for a change in U.S. law to allow importation of drugs from foreign countries including Canada to save Americans money. And, at one time before he became a candidate, he even praised single payer health care where the government pays for care for all citizens.
Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen on June 20, 2016 quoted Trump as saying, during the primaries, “Every Republican wants to do a big number on Social Security, they want to do it on Medicare, and they want to do it on Medicaid. And, we can’t do that. And it’s not fair to the people that have been paying in for years.”
Sounds to me president elect Trump will be an advocate for seniors and strengthen Medicare and Social Security if he follows through on what he has said in the past.
