The development of the bill in Congress to abolish the key provisions of Obamacare began even before the inauguration of Donald Trump. Subsequently, the Republicans in the lower house of Congress developed a new health care reform called the American Health Care Act, around which there was a vivid debate. The bill was reprocessed several times. It was adopted the second time by the House of Representatives. The initiative passed to the Senate, after which the document was originally supposed to be sent for signature to the president.
The reform, developed by the Republican Representatives, was seen more radical, that is, it implied more significant changes in the structure of Obamacare. However, even considering that the senators proposed a rollback of Obamacare reform only “to a minimum”, the initiative failed.
This American Health Care Act has the following positions:
- it implied the abolition of compulsory insurance by employers and the personal obligation of citizens to buy insurance.
- it was proposed to empower state authorities at their discretion to exclude pregnancy and contraceptive payments from mandatory insurance plans.
- there was a proposal to allow insurance companies to take from the elderly not three, but five times more money for insurance.
- they offer to reduce federal support to the states under the program of medical care for low-income citizens from 2020.
In addition, the reform implied the fine abolition that Americans are required to pay for the lack of insurance.
As for the “existing diseases”, the Senate proposed to uphold the obligation of insurance companies to cover the costs of treating diseases that had existed before the signing of the contract. Insurers should be given the right to submit a request to the federal government to reduce assistance before paying for drugs. The House of Representatives wanted to leave this issue to state governments. In addition, the Senate proposed not to abolish the system of exchanges on which citizens can buy insurance.
The scheme proposed by Trump and the Republicans has its drawbacks. Moreover, in many ways, they began to be considered disadvantages due to the fact that people began to get used to the principles of Obamacare. For example, young and many other Americans, who have completely forgotten about paying for medical expenses, began to actively use the obligation of employers to provide health insurance to employees.