Corey Lewandowski: GOP health bill will improve care

Thanks to ObamaCare, our healthcare system is sinking faster than the Titanic. Healthcare is no longer affordable for the average Jane and Joe, not by a long shot. Keeping the healthcare status quo is not an option — not when the 46 percent of Americans can’t even afford an unexpected, $400 emergency expense.

President Donald Trump said on March 24, 2017, “I want to have a great healthcare bill and plan – and we will. It will happen.”  Candidate Trump was explicit that ObamaCare must be repealed and replaced, because it is driving cost through the roof, lowering the quality of care, and creating more government intervention in the delivery of health care services. ObamaCare is a disaster and promise-keeper President Trump is very close to replacing it with a less expensive alternative that will be a major improvement over current law.

{mosads}The House passed the American Health Care Act as a necessary reform to save Americans from a failing ObamaCare system. The Senate is inching closer to passing a similar repeal and replace bill, which could receive a roll call vote as early as next week.

Thankfully, the Republican approach addresses skyrocketing costs imposed by ObamaCare. The Department of Health and Human Services put out a report on May 23, 2017 that found the “average individual market premiums more than doubled from $2,784 per year in 2013 to $5,712 on Healthcare.gov in 2017 – an increase of $2,928 or 105 percent.”

The report further found that “all 39 states using Healthcare.gov experienced an increase in individual market premiums from 2013 – 2017” and “ 62 percent of states using Healthcare.gov had 2017 premiums double what was measured in 2013.” There were three states —Alaska, Alabama, and Oklahoma — that saw premiums triple over the past five years.

The new Republican plan will get costs under control by increasing competition, reducing federal spending, and lowering taxes for American families. This bill will slash the federal deficit, saving taxpayers over $800 billion and providing middle-income Americans and small business owners with $1 trillion in tax relief.

The Trump-supported reform plan also addresses the lack of choice that was imposed by ObamaCare’s complicated mandates. Remember when President Obama said, “if you like your doctor you have, you can keep your doctor?” While the media gushed over President Obama’s promises of low cost, more choice, and the best health care system in the world, all those promises turned out to be a lie to get the law passed. President Obama was even credited with the “Lie of the Year in 2013” by PolitiFact for his healthcare flubs.  Last year, even the New York Times had to admit that two analyses have shown that only 2 percent of eligible Americans had only one choice for ObamaCare plans in 2016. Now, according to the McKinsey Center for U.S. health System Reform, about 17 percent of eligible citizens will end up having one choice of providers this year – a number that will continue spiraling upward if reforms are not made.  

Republicans’ reform plan will fix Obama’s stifling of choice in part by expanding all Americans’ access to health savings accounts (HSAs), doubling the current cap on tax-deductible contributions. When this plan goes into law, all Americans will have the ability to deduct $6,550 in contributions to an HSA.

Socialized medicine was the real goal of liberals when they created ObamaCare. They knew at the time that healthcare for all could only be achieved through persistence and by inching the private system closer to failure.  They have been successfully at that and hoped that Hillary Clinton would win the presidency to seal the deal once and for all. While the private sector is making great strides in cost-cutting innovations like telemedicine, the liberals want to go backwards to a time when one needed the permission of government to get decent health care.

Keeping ObamaCare as-is will devastate American consumers’ pocketbooks and decimate the American healthcare system. If Democrats in Congress want to play defense and block any reforms, they will be to blame when people are tossed off health care plans or stop getting coverage because they can’t afford the ObamaCare plans. The time is now for Republicans to coalesce together and reform this failed system while they still control the legislative and executive branches. Failure to move the needle now will likely result in a full-out single-payer healthcare system in the future.

Corey R. Lewandowski is President Trump’s former campaign manager.

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