Hillary Clinton agreed that Obamacare has some problems that need fixing, asked Sunday night about her husband’s recent comments that part of the Affordable Care Act is a “crazy system.”
“He clarified what he meant, and it’s very clear, we are in a situation in our country where were we to start all over again we might come up with a different system,” Clinton said.
“But we have an employer-based system, and the Affordable Care Act was meant to fill the gap between people who were too poor and couldn’t put together resources to pay for healthcare,” Clinton added.
Bill Clinton raised eyebrows last week, when he used sharp words to criticize the law’s affordability problems for small business owners and middle-class consumers. But Hillary Clinton has also said there’s a need for more financial support for people who don’t qualify for insurance subsidies, proposing more subsidies on the campaign trail as part of her health plan.
The two candidates stood in stark contrast when asked during the second presidential debate about Obamacare’s affordability problems, with Clinton arguing the law should be improved upon and Trump slamming it as “disaster” and “total fraud.”
“The whole thing was a fraud and it doesn’t work,” Trump said.
Clinton noted that should Congress repeal the entire healthcare law, some of its popular protections for consumers would be lost such as its requirement for insurers to cover children up to age 26 on their parents’ plans. She said she “very much” wants to save what’s good about the law but fix other parts.
“We’ve got to get costs down, we’ve got to provide some additonal help to small businesses,” Clinton said. “But if we repeal it and start over again, all those benefits I just mentioned are lost to everybody.”
A key question facing both candidates is how they would make insurance more affordable for Americans. While the healthcare law provides some subsidies to low- and middle-income Americans, plans are sharply raising both monthly premiums and annual deductibles and many believe healthcare costs are still too steep for many patients.
While rate hikes vary by state, some insurers in the Obamacare marketplaces are raising prices by 60 percent or more. Nationwide, individual market rates are increasing 25.5 percent on average for the enrollment season starting Nov. 1, according to analyst Charles Gaba.
At the same time, 8.6 percent of Americans still lack coverage. Even though there’s a penalty for being uninsured, convincing them to buy insurance plans will be an ongoing challenge, especially if they view coverage as unaffordable.
Clinton has released multiple policy proposals for how she would expand coverage and bring down costs.
She wants to create a government-funded, “public option” plan in the state insurance marketplaces, which would put downward price pressure on private plans. Trump slammed her public option proposal Sunday night, saying it would be a “disaster.”
Clinton also has suggested increasing subsidies for out-of-pocket medical costs and requiring insurers to cover three doctors’ visits per year without first making patients meet their deductibles.
Clinton’s proposals would indeed result in coverage for more Americans, according to a recent analysis by the RAND Corporation and Commonwealth Fund. The groups estimated 9.1 million people would get covered, essentially cutting the U.S. uninsured rate in half.
And more Americans trust Clinton to handle healthcare issues than trust Trump. Fifty percent of respondents to a Sept. 25 Washington Post poll said they trust Clinton more on healthcare, while 39 percent said they trust Trump more.
Like virtually every other Republican, Trump has promised to repeal its major provisions — and could actually do so as president if Republicans retain Senate majority. RAND has estimated that would cause 19.7 million Americans to lose coverage.
On Sunday night, Trump reiterated his support for ditching the healthcare law, although he acknowledged he would like to retain one of its most popular provisions requiring insurers to cover consumers with pre-existing health conditions.
The Republican nominee also promised to allow health insurers to sell policies across state lines, another popular GOP-backed policy, and said he would back block-granting Medicaid. On his website he has proposed some other bullet points of health reforms, like providing tax deductions to help people buy coverage, but he didn’t mention any other specifics during the debate.
Instead, Trump promised voters that should he become president, he would dramatically improve insurance plans. “You will have the finest healthcare plan there is,” he said.
But Trump has said other things that are unusual coming from a Republican nominee. He recently discussed Medicaid as a way to expand coverage to those who can’t afford it, even though Medicaid expansion is a key component of Obamacare that Republicans generally hate.
