7/27/2023 0 Comments Backtrack screening![]() ![]() In recent years, however, the administration pushed to relax rules enacted in the Affordable Care Act requiring health plans to cover a basic set of benefits, such as prescription drugs and hospital care.Īdministration officials argue that comprehensive benefits have needlessly raised costs. ![]() Similarly, health advocates say, strict government standards for health plans, hospitals and nursing homes help ensure that patients are protected, whether there is a pandemic or not. If your population is less likely to have health insurance, then it’s more likely to be unhealthy and have uncontrolled chronic diseases like high blood pressure or diabetes.” “That’s true for preventive care, like flu vaccinations and screening for illnesses. “People are more likely to seek healthcare … if they have health insurance,” Auerbach said. Yet removing barriers to insurance is vitally important even when there isn’t an infectious disease outbreak, said John Auerbach, head of the nonprofit Trust for America’s Health. ![]() Restrictions on insurance coverage are particularly problematic during an epidemic like the coronavirus pandemic, according to public health experts. “Putting up barriers to coverage has been a big part of this administration’s healthcare agenda,” said Joan Alker, who heads the Center for Children and Families at Georgetown University.Įven as the efforts to scrap Obamacare stalled, the Trump administration encouraged conservative states to explore other ways to restrict eligibility for Medicaid.ĬMS strongly backed state efforts to impose work requirements on Medicaid enrollees, a bureaucratic hurdle that caused thousands of people to lose coverage in Arkansas before a federal judge halted the initiative, calling it inconsistent with Medicaid law.Īnd the agency cleared several states, including Arizona, Florida and Iowa, to limit the ability of poor patients to enroll in Medicaid coverage after they got sick. Supreme Court later this year.Īnd in February, the White House proposed a federal budget for the coming fiscal year that would cut some $200 billion in federal aid to states for Medicaid, which currently insures more than 70 million low-income Americans. The lawsuit is set to be heard by the U.S. The White House then made common cause with Texas and other Republican-led states suing to wipe out the 2010 healthcare law, often called Obamacare. It would have stripped Medicaid coverage from tens of millions of Americans, many suffering from chronic illnesses, according to independent analyses. She and other senior administration health officials strongly backed the unsuccessful push by congressional Republicans in 2017 to roll back the Affordable Care Act, helping the lawmakers write the repeal legislation that ultimately collapsed in the Senate. That is a marked departure from many of the policies Trump and his deputies, including Verma, have advocated over the last three years. The agency, she added last week, “is doing everything in its power to help states eliminate any barriers or delays in their care.” ![]() “We are especially mindful of our beneficiaries with underlying health conditions,” said Seema Verma, who oversees Medicare and Medicaid as CMS chief. As the coronavirus crisis has intensified, administration officials now increasingly stress their eagerness to extend health protections to more Americans. Under Trump, the number of uninsured Americans has steadily ticked upward after years of decline. “People without adequate health insurance will get sicker, become poorer, and die younger than if they had insurance,” Sommers said. Chan School of Public Health, who has extensively documented how health insurance improves patients’ health. Benjamin Sommers of Harvard University’s T.H. “Having tens of millions of Americans without insurance or with inadequate coverage is particularly concerning during a public health emergency, though in a sense, coronavirus simply makes more palpable and immediate the ramifications of opposition to coverage expansion,” said Dr. ![]()
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