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How Trump’s Health Care Order Contrasts With Democrats’ ‘Medicare For None’

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As Washington remains consumed by impeachment fever, President Trump returned to the issue of health care. In an executive order released Thursday, and a speech at The Villages in Florida where he spoke on the topic, the president attempted to provide a vision that contrasts with the left’s push for single-payer socialized medicine.

This executive order focused largely on the current Medicare program, as opposed to the existing private insurance marketplace. By promoting new options and focusing on reducing costs, however, the president’s actions stand in opposition to the one-size-fits-all model of the proposed health care takeover.

The Administration Wants To Explore These Proposals

One fact worth repeating about Thursday’s action: As with prior executive orders, it will in and of itself not change policy. The more substantive changes will come in regulatory proposals issued by government agencies (most notably the Department of Health and Human Services) in response to the executive order. While only the regulations can flesh out all of the policy details, the language of the order provides some sense of the proposals the administration wants to explore.

Modernized Benefits: The executive order promotes “innovative … benefit structures” for Medicare Advantage, the program in which an estimated 24 million beneficiaries receive Medicare subsidies via a network of private insurers. It discusses “reduc[ing] barriers to obtaining Medicare Medical Savings Accounts,” a health savings account-like mechanism that gives beneficiaries incentives to serve as smart consumers of health care. To accomplish that last objective, the order references broader access to cost and quality data, “improving [seniors’] ability to make decisions about their health care that work best for them.”

Expanded Access: The order seeks to increase access to telehealth as one way to improve seniors’ ability to obtain care, particularly in rural areas. It also looks to combat state-imposed restrictions that can limit care options, and can lead to narrow physician and provider networks for Medicare Advantage plans.

More Providers: The order discusses eliminating regulatory burdens on doctors and other medical providers, a continuation of prior initiatives by the administration. It also references allowing non-physician providers, such as nurse practitioners and physician assistants, to practice to the full scope of their medical licenses and receive comparable pay for their work.

Monetary Savings: The order discusses allowing seniors to share directly in program savings, including by allowing Medicare Advantage plans to provide rebates or cash incentives to patients for high-value care. It also advances the policy of site-neutral payment, whereby providers get paid the same amount for performing a given service, regardless of where they provide that service (e.g., in a hospital versus a doctor’s office).

Entitlement Reform: Last, but certainly not least, the order proposes allowing seniors to opt out of the Medicare program. This proposal would not allow individuals to opt out of Medicare taxes, but it would undo current regulations that require seniors to opt into the Medicare program when they apply for Social Security.

As I had previously explained, this proposal stands as a common-sense solution to our entitlement shortfalls: After all, why should we force someone like Bill Gates or Warren Buffett to accept Medicare benefits if they are perfectly content to use other forms of health coverage?

Democrats’ Health Care Vision Is Medicare for None

Of course, many on the socialist left have made their vision plain for quite some time: They want the government to run the entire health-care system. Ironically enough, however, Sen. Bernie Sanders’ single-payer legislation would abolish the current Medicare program in the process:

(1) IN GENERAL.—Notwithstanding any other provision of law, subject to paragraphs (2) and (3)—

(A) no benefits shall be available under title XVIII of the Social Security Act for any item or service furnished beginning on or after the effective date of benefits under section 106(a)

As I first noted nearly two years ago, this language makes Sanders’ proposal not “Medicare for All,” but “Medicare for None.” It speaks to the radical nature of the socialist agenda that they cannot come clean with the American people about the implications of their legislation, such that even analysts at liberal think-tanks have accused them of using dishonest means to sell single-payer.

Just as important, “Medicare for None” would take away choices for seniors and hundreds of millions of other Americans. As of next year, an estimated 24 million seniors will enroll in Medicare Advantage plans to obtain their Medicare benefits. As I outline in my book, Medicare Advantage often provides better benefits to seniors, and at a lower cost to both beneficiaries and the federal government. Yet Sanders and his socialist allies want to abolish this popular coverage, to consolidate power and control in a government-run health system.

The actions the administration announced on Thursday represent the latest in a series of steps designed to offer an alternative to the command-and-control vision promoted by the left. The American people don’t deserve socialized medicine, but they don’t deserve the broken status quo either. Only true patient-centered reforms can create a health-care environment that works for seniors and the American people as a whole.