In our last post, we started to discuss the American Health Care Act as it was presented to us by Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. If you have not read that yet, please find it here. After going over some of the failures of ObamaCare, Speaker Ryan started to explain what we will find in the legislation that is going up for a vote on March 24th.
Within the American Health Care Act, you will find the lowering costs of insurance premiums, creating more choices for citizens on their insurance options, giving patients control over their health care coverage and creating universal access to care. But how will they do that? First, they would repeal the taxes in ObamaCare. They would, secondly, stop the massive spending that is going on. They would end the federal mandates that are telling private citizens what to do. They will be protecting citizens with preexisting conditions by encouraging states to set up risk pools so that people with PEC could still get insurance. These state-based and federally contributed risk pools directly support any people with PEC so that the rest of the population has cheaper and more predictably priced health insurance. They also want to create more transparency within the health care systems so that patients know what they are paying for up front. Currently, you receive care and are then sent a bill. What you are billed for can come as a complete surprise. Instead, they would like to create a free market system that allows hospitals, insurance companies, and health providers to compete against each other for the business of the American citizens. This makes our health care system like every other market that we have in our country and gives the citizens the control they need to make good decisions. They want to move Medicaid to be state run systems. The states know better what the needs of their residents are and how to better care for them than a federally based system. They would allow young adults up to the age of 26 to stay on their parent’s insurance and would transition in their changes so that people’s current health care is not being immediate disrupted or not available to them.
What do we think of these changes? If the law passes, we could see rates drop by 20-30% with more plan choices and power to negotiate better contracts with doctors. But we want to wait and see how things play out. There are a lot of favorable items in the law that will favor lower premiums, but we will be taking a wait and see approach to see what ends up in the new law. Follow Bernardini & Donovan to stay up on the latest changes regarding your health care and how the new incoming legislation may affect you.
