President Donald Trump still insists his administration will fix the "failed experiment" of Obamacare.
“Over the next four weeks we have great health care plans coming out, but we got rid of the individual mandate,” he told a cheering crowd in Indiana last week. However, the White House has offered few details since.
The president Friday promised to crackdown on pharmaceutical companies to slash rising costs for prescription medicine. He also met last week with executives from Google, Goldman and Boeing to talk about advancements in artificial intelligence in health care and other fields.
Even Michael Tanner, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, is in the dark about what the Trump administration has planned. But he says one thing is for sure.
“By removing the individual mandate, but not reforming the underlying plan, they may actually have sped up many of the problems with Obamacare, specifically the sort of adverse selection death spiral that's leading to higher premiums.”
He says the entire concept of Obamacare was doomed from the start.
“They're trying to shoehorn people with pre-existing conditions, who are basically uninsurable, into the traditional insurance system,” says Tanner. “The problem is insurance companies will lose money on them and they have to recoup that money by charging higher premiums to young healthy people.”
The Labor Department meanwhile, is reviewing Sen. Rand Paul's idea of association health plans. “They do expect to release regualtions on it sometime in the next few weeks,” Tanner added.