Seema Verma, one of President Trump’s top health chiefs, took a swipe Tuesday at Democratic proposals to move all people in the U.S. onto Medicare by highlighting the drawbacks people had experienced in Obamacare.
“Their solution is literally to do more of what’s not working,” Verma said at America’s Health Insurance Plans’ conference in Washington, D.C. “It’s like the man who has a pounding headache, who then takes a hammer to his head to make it go away.”
Verma, who is administrator at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, highlighted the rising premiums in Obamacare and the reduced options for coverage.
“When the same voices clamoring for ‘Medicare for all’ promised the ACA would lower costs, allow you to keep your doctor and your plan, and none of that has proven to be true, then I think we have to pay attention to that,” she said.
After the passage of Obamacare, premiums rose in the individual market, meaning among people who bought coverage directly from insurers because they weren’t receiving it through a job or government program. While about 10 million people receive subsidies that help blunt the costs of coverage, 7 million do not because of how the law was written.
The driver of premium increases in Obamacare was the rules prohibiting insurers from turning away people with pre-existing conditions, or charging them more, and requiring coverage for a certain range of medical services.
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The increases were compounded by actions by the Obama administration to change the rules of enrollment. The Trump administration further added to the cost by ending payments to insurers known as cost-sharing reduction subsidies, which insurers made up for by raising premiums. Insurers also faced uncertainty last year as they waited to see whether Republicans would succeed at overhauling the healthcare law.
Verma has been critical of the “Medicare for All” proposal before. Several Democrats who are expected to run for the presidential nomination in 2020 have gotten behind a bill by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., that would roll all people onto Medicare and do away with private plans.
“I find it ironic that in the face of the facts – people, whom I assume are well-meaning, are calling for more government healthcare,” Verma said. “Spending on a single-payer, government-run healthcare system at the federal level will crowd out other priorities, from national defense to infrastructure to spending on education. If you find yourself skeptical about the negatives of more government control, just look at the history of Obamacare.”
The Medicare for All Act hasn’t been scored by the Congressional Budget Office, but one analysis by researchers at the George Mason University’s Mercatus Center estimated it would cost the federal government $32 trillion over a decade.
The amount is $2 trillion lower than the entire system pays now, but it would be achieved by cutting payments that hospitals and doctors currently receive from private insurance by 40 percent to the lower Medicare rates.
Verma said that Medicare already had challenges of its own threatening its solvency, and called for a focus on lowering the drivers of healthcare costs.
