https://www.medpagetoday.com/washington-watch/electioncoverage/88250?xid=nl_mpt_DHE_2020-08-26&eun=g885344d0r&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Headlines%20Top%20Cat%20HeC%20%202020-08-26&utm_term=NL_Daily_DHE_dual-gmail-definition
List of bullet points prompts debate over lack of detail, potential for actual achievement.
Health policy scholars critiqued the Trump campaign’s broad strokes healthcare agenda for his potential second term. While some found it overly vague, even dishonest, one suggested it was precisely what voters want.
Released Sunday night as a list of bullet points, the “Fighting for You” agenda will apparently serve as the Republican platform for the 2020 election. The GOP’s platform committee voted over the weekend to dispense with the customary detailed policy document for this cycle, in favor of simply backing President Trump’s agenda.
That agenda, which the Trump campaign promised would be fleshed out in future speeches and statements, included the following points relevant to healthcare:
Eradicate COVID-19
- Develop a vaccine by the end of 2020
- Return to normal in 2021
- Make all critical medicines and supplies for healthcare workers
- Refill stockpiles and prepare for future pandemics
Healthcare
- Cut prescription drug prices
- Put patients and doctors back in charge of our healthcare system
- Lower healthcare insurance premiums
- End surprise billing
- Cover all pre-existing conditions
- Protect Social Security and Medicare
- Protect our veterans and provide world-class healthcare and services
Reliance on China
- Allow 100% expensing deductions for essential industries like pharmaceuticals and robotics who bring back their manufacturing to the U.S.
- No federal contracts for companies who outsource to China
- Hold China fully accountable for allowing the virus to spread around the world
Joseph Antos, PhD, a resident scholar in healthcare and retirement policy at the American Enterprise Institute, characterized Trump’s strategy as “Don’t explain it. Just say what your goals are.”
He applauded the brevity of the document, 6 pages in total, covering 10 different policy areas from jobs to healthcare to immigration, as a “smart strategy.”
Voters don’t want to read lengthy policy briefs and gave the “Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force Recommendations” which were over 100 pages long and “unbelievably complicated stuff” as an example of how not to reach voters.
“I think [Trump] got it right. He’s not running a think tank…. He’s running for office. He does have a keen eye for what the average voter could stand to listen to.”
Gail Wilensky, PhD, an economist and senior fellow at Project Hope in Bethesda, Maryland, and CMS administrator under President George H.W. Bush, agreed that a platform packed with policy details doesn’t sway many voters.
This election, she said, is about one thing only: “Trump or not Trump.”
Whither the ACA?
Nevertheless, the Trump campaign’s goals merit attention, often for what they don’t include as well as what they do.
As for the substance of the agenda, the key difference between the Trump administration’s proposed agenda and that of the Democratic nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden, is that the latter aims to expand access to health insurance using the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) framework, said Wilensky.
While Trump’s 2016 healthcare agenda centered around repealing the ACA, his second-term agenda doesn’t mention the law by name.
Wilensky said she’s glad that Trump did not include ACA repeal among his goals, given that “there’s no historical precedence” for eliminating the core benefits of such far-reaching legislation, now on the books for 10 years and fully implemented for 6.
Kavita Patel, MD, a primary care physician and Brookings Institution scholar in Washington, D.C., who was an advisor on the Democrats’ platform, said, “This is all just posturing and politics and almost a continuation of things [Trump’s] been saying without any real details behind it.”
Many of these items — such as ending surprise billing, lowering health insurance premiums, and cutting prescription drug prices — would have Democrats’ support “but they would get there in a different way,” Patel said.
One thing she was surprised not to see in the agenda were references to abortion or other reproductive health issues, she noted.
Insurance Coverage Neglected
Rosemarie Day, founder and CEO of Day Health Strategies and author of Marching Toward Coverage: How Women can Lead the Fight for Universal Healthcare, was dumbfounded by the overall lack of substance in the agenda, and particularly by the absence of a plan to deal with rising rates of uninsurance related to the pandemic.
Day thought the Trump campaign could have at least included a plan for returning to the “baseline” on the number of uninsured. Another administration might have chosen to promote Medicaid coverage or encourage unemployed workers to enroll on the health insurance exchanges, but not this administration, she said.
“So, they’re really just leaving people out in the cold,” Day said.
Wilensky, too, suggested it would have been “useful” for the Trump campaign to have “talked about how they envision getting more people covered.”
Paul Ginsburg, PhD, director of the USC-Brookings Schaeffer Initiative for Health Policy, said much of the agenda is “just aspirations.”
“‘Put patients and doctors in charge of our healthcare system’? … I don’t know what the policy is, [but] who’s going to quarrel with that?”
Lowering healthcare premiums also sounds “nice” but how that would be achieved is unclear, he said.
One agenda item in the document that really really irked Day was the Trump administration’s pledge to protect people who have pre-existing conditions.
“I consider the ‘covering all pre-existing conditions’ an outright lie,” she said. “I find it incredibly upsetting that [Trump] continues to say that” because he spent his first term attacking the ACA, which does protect pre-existing condition coverage.
Day also noted that the administration has repeatedly promised an ACA replacement without ever delivering an actual proposal.
Responding to the Pandemic
The Trump campaign agenda lists “eradicate COVID-19” on its bullet list, but Patel said it’s “probably not an achievable goal.” A more realistic target is to control it better.
“We have deaths every year and hospitalizations from influenza, but we have a vaccine and we have … strategies to protect people like seniors and young children,” Patel said. “That’s exactly the kind of attitude we have to take” with regard to COVID-19.
For both Patel and Ginsburg, “return to normal” is another aspiration that’s beyond the government’s power to deliver.
“So much depends on a vaccine and its acceptance and how quickly it can be produced,” Ginsburg said.
As for making all critical medicines and supplies for healthcare workers in the United States, Ginsburg acknowledged that it’s theoretically doable, but still unrealistic because it would be “way too expensive.”
“Brand name drugs are routinely produced in other countries as well as the U.S.; I wouldn’t want to upset that supply chain, especially for drugs that are in shortage,” he said.
HENRY KOTULA 