Trump Should Repeal Obamacare During the Pandemic

If he repeals and replaces Obamacare, he could guarantee himself reelection

“You’re going to find it to be a very exciting two weeks,” President Trump.

Trump promised to repeal and replace Obamacare since the 2016 election. After Trump became President, CNN released a list of his promises, where they tracked whether or not he fulfilled them.

Trump only eliminated the individual mandate clause of Obamacare, which went into effect in January of 2019. An individual mandate is a fine placed on a person for failing to purchase health insurance.

Most full-time college students, the unemployed, and families under the poverty line would agree eliminating the individual mandate was a blessing, as they could not afford to purchase health insurance and instead had to pay the fine. This is a problem as roughly 30 million people are currently uninsured.

Trump told Chris Wallace during his interview on July 19th he would be eliminating Obamacare and replacing it with something better within two weeks.

Well? It’s been more than two weeks. Where is this supposed better version of Obamacare?

Why should we get rid of Obamacare?

While the intentions behind Obamacare were good, it has faced controversy ever since its implementation. When the website first opened, a massive amount of people tried to sign up on healthcare.gov, which crashed the site.

The individual mandate put in place by Obama forced people to sign up for health insurance, which affected the unemployed, college students, and those below the poverty line. They could not afford to sign up because of the high premiums, which doubled from 2013 to 2017 as Obamacare was implemented.

This caused millions of families who could not afford it to go without health insurance. The cost of Obamacare was simply too high.

One famous example is the cost of insulin. One vial of insulin can cost around $300 without insurance today. Most people need more than one vial per month, so the cost of not having health insurance is deadly, especially for those under the poverty line.

With premiums for an individual running around $5,700 per year under Obamacare in 2017, as opposed to $2,800 in 2013, it is better to eliminate Obamacare and replace it with something better and more affordable.

Obamacare is a savior during the pandemic for those who can afford it

Trump and the GOP advocate to repeal Obamacare, even during the pandemic. For millions of families, Obamacare is a savior for people who lost their healthcare coverage when they lost their job.

Even though Obamacare is flawed, the people who can afford it can offset a huge bill in the event they contract coronavirus. Removing it now would cause millions of Americans to suffer and would plunge them into massive debt.

Unfortunately, those who cannot afford it, such as full-time college students, part-time employees, and low-income families, are stuck without insurance during the worst pandemic since 1918.

Trump’s logic makes sense: get back to work if your employer covers your health insurance

Trump has pushed for businesses to reopen and for people to go back to work.

Since the cost of health insurance doubled under Obamacare in four years, it makes sense to go back to work if your employer provides you with health insurance at a lower cost than Obamacare.

With the unemployment rate at 10.2%, there are millions of people currently without a healthcare plan, unless they applied for Obamacare on their own.

If a person contracts coronavirus, the cost of going to the hospital would easily run into the tens of thousands of dollars. With insurance, the costs would be reduced. This would save them from financial ruin.

This mentality is backward. Going back to work leads to higher cases and more death

Here comes the problem. Sending people back to work so they can afford healthcare if they contract coronavirus is ridiculous because now they run higher risks of contracting it.

In Mississippi, several students and one teacher tested positive when the school returned to in-person learning just this week.

Had the school chosen distance learning, the kids and the teacher wouldn’t have contracted coronavirus within a week of going back to school. Now, the teacher will have to pay for whatever their insurance doesn’t cover on the hospital bill.

Hopefully, the students’ parents have insurance with their employer or signed up for the high premiums of Obamacare. If they don’t, the hospital will stick them with a bill they cannot pay for.

Of course, distance or virtual work cannot be provided to all jobs, so healthcare coverage for people working minimum wage or part-time is a desperate necessity right now, something places like Wal-Mart aren’t providing since the implementation of Obamacare.

Trump could win reelection if he passed a better healthcare plan

Trump recently signed an executive order to cut the costs of insulin. Upon inspection of the order, it reeks of vagueness.

As Politico reported, conservatives currently debate whether the order should be exercised. Politico states it’s unlikely the executive order would be fully implemented before the election.

Even if Trump manages to enforce the executive order before the election, it’s unlikely it will match Canada’s prices. A $300 insulin vial in the U.S. costs $30 in Canada for the same kind of insulin. However, if he did, he would certainly swing a lot of voters in his direction.

Trump would win reelection if he passed a decent healthcare plan that:

1. lowers the cost of healthcare premiums

Obama had promised premiums would be reduced by up to $2,500 per family per year. Instead, the costs doubled, from an average of $2,800 to $5,700 in four years. If Trump can manage to fulfill Obama’s promise, he can easily say he did what Obama failed to do and save families hundreds of dollars on their healthcare premiums.

2. lowers prescription prices

Trump would also have to match or come close to Canada’s insulin prices, among other prescriptions with the use of the executive order he passed in July to satisfy people who have to purchase their prescriptions out of pocket.

3. allows people to keep their doctors

One of the complaints of Obamacare was that people were not allowed to keep their doctor, as their providers changed and their doctors were outside the network. Trump would need to implement a healthcare plan that worked nationally, so a person can go to any doctor they choose.

4. prevents it from being tied to a person’s employer

While Obamacare did allow a person to have health insurance that was not tied to their employer, the premiums were so high, people chose to go without it and instead pay the fine implemented by the individual mandate.

Trump would need to provide better healthcare than Obamacare to win over the lower class. By doing so, millions of people would have access to affordable health insurance and relieve stress from millions of low income families.

If Trump implemented such a plan on a national level, Biden would not be able to compete. Trump could easily tell American citizens he saved the economy and provided healthcare for all during the worst pandemic in a century. Biden would easily lose the electoral college and the popular vote.

However, as long as conservatives choose to align with pharmaceutical companies and hospitals and focus on profits over standard of living and saving lives, it is unlikely Trump could successfully pass such a plan with so much pushback from Congress and conservatives.

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