Clinton touts ObamaCare improvements in journal article

Hillary Clinton touted her ideas for improving ObamaCare and warned against repealing it in a new article she wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine. 

{mosads}The prestigious medical journal invited both major-party presidential nominees to write articles laying out their health ideas. The journal said Republican nominee Donald Trump did not respond. 

Clinton, as she has previously, calls for adding to ObamaCare.

The Democratic nominee wants to provide a new tax credit of up to $5,000 to help people pay for high out-of-pocket healthcare costs. She also calls for boosting outreach efforts to get more people signed up and creating a government-run “public option” health insurer to increase competition on the ObamaCare marketplaces. 

While acknowledging that out-of-pocket health costs and reduced competition are areas that need to be addressed in ObamaCare, Clinton also warns against repealing the law, as Trump has proposed. 

“My opponent and Republicans in Congress would strip away essential consumer protections and subject Americans to medical underwriting discrimination and even higher, more unpredictable premiums,” Clinton writes. “They would also leave more than 20 million Americans without any insurance at all, shifting the cost of their care to insured Americans and health care providers.”

A study from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget found that Trump’s healthcare plan would cause 21 million people to lose coverage by repealing the coverage gains under ObamaCare. 

The study found that Trump’s ideas for a replacement, like allowing insurance to be sold across state lines and creating a tax deduction for health insurance, would only insure about 1 million additional people. 

Many of Clinton’s ideas for improving ObamaCare would have little chance of passing Congress, given that Republicans are expected to control at least the House. 

President Obama has proposed similar ideas, but they have not been implemented because Congress would not approve them. 

Clinton also puts a focus on fighting high drug prices, an area that has grown in prominence with uproar over the price of products like the EpiPen allergy medication. 

She wants to improve drug competition by streamlining the approval process for cheaper generic drugs, an area that could provide room to work with Republicans. She also proposes ideas that are more exclusively in the domain of Democrats, like allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices. 

In a nod to Vice President Biden’s signature project, Clinton also writes: “We must maintain a continued commitment to the cancer moon shot so we can provide health care providers with new tools and treatments for their patients.”

And she expresses some hope that she can work across the aisle.

“Health and health care in America should not be a partisan or divisive issue,” she writes.