But Trump also breaks with the party, promising not to alter Medicare, proposing, like Clinton, to allow Medicare to negotiate pharmaceutical drug prices, and considering the idea of allowing pharmaceuticals to be imported from overseas, also like his Democratic opponent.
“I believe on the healthcare issue, he will be somewhat deferential to what the Republican leaders want their healthcare bill to look like in the future … not necessarily because that’s his particular choice but because he has a whole other agenda, which he says over and over is really important to him, and he needs the Republican leadership [to support it],” Blendon says.
How Will Things Get Done?
According to a Brookings Institution policy document published earlier this year, anyone proposing healthcare policy changes will confront “a daunting negotiation with powerful stakeholders to defend and enhance their varied interests” following the 2016 election.1
Three possible scenarios include a full Democratic president and Congress, a full Republican president and Congress, or a split presidency and Congress (including the two houses going each to the other party).
“If there is a split in the House and Senate, will things get done?” says Bradley Flansbaum, DO, MPH, MHM, a member of SHM’s Public Policy Committee. “Democrats don’t want to indicate the law has flaws and needs fixes. That admission invites the GOP to say, ‘See, it’s broken.’ Conversely, if Republicans do try to work with anyone on the other side of the aisle, they will be branded a pariah.”
One hospitalist sees Congress as the main force behind whether the ACA is kept intact.
“Congress holds the purse strings and has the control to chip away at the financial underpinnings until those toothpicks that hold up the Obamacare elephant break and it comes crashing down,” says Joshua Lenchus, DO, RPh, FACP, SFHM, a hospitalist at the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Hospital in Florida and a member of SHM’s Public Policy Committee.
ACA Fixes?
One option Clinton has proposed is a federally administered public alternative to private insurers in the ACA marketplace, particularly as more companies leave exchanges across the country. Blendon says there is some concern over the idea’s viability since, while it could help keep pricing competitive, it might just “attract some of the sickest people because they’ll feel it provides more financial security.”
“A very high priority for a Clinton administration and a Democratic Congress [is] to get in there with a rescue team, and this is an issue of providing wraparound protection for [insurance] companies that basically end up with either older or sicker people than they had at all anticipated and some sort of a financial cushion to carry them into other years,” Blendon says.
In its policy paper, the Brookings Institution says any serious Republican idea to repeal the ACA should offer an alternative to replace the healthcare bill’s spending reductions, particularly since the Congressional Budget Office estimates repeal of the ACA would increase direct Medicare spending by $802 billion over the next decade, possibly accelerating the depletion of the program’s trust fund.1
“I think what would happen would be some amount of what the Republican leadership has talked about, some sort of a partial alternative to the ACA, and it would cover less people and less benefits, but there would be an absolute plan that they would try to have in place,” Blendon says.
But only time will tell how the election will affect hospitalists in their day-to-day work.
“Unfortunately, we’re still not at a stage that you could say to somebody, ‘This is what the next five years are going to look like; that’s how you should think about what your hospital and practice should be thinking,’” Blendon says. “You’re much more stuck with, ‘There is uncertainty here.’” TH