Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Clinton Promises To Fix Obamacare If She Wins, But Her Proposals Face Long Odds In Congress
After news broke Monday that premiums for the Affordable Care Act will rise an average of 22 percent next year, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton spent the week defending the聽healthcare law, saying its problems are fixable. She called for lowering the聽Medicare buy-in age and again advocated for a so called聽public option 鈥 a government-run competitor to private insurers. While polls show her leading Republican Donald Trump with just 10 days to go before the election, a Clinton administration likely would find itself聽caught between liberal lawmakers聽wedded to the politically unviable public option and Republicans聽who want to scrap the law entirely. (John, 10/28)
Responding to the uproar over ObamaCare premium hikes, Hillary Clinton聽on Tuesday promised: 鈥淲e鈥檙e going to make changes to fix problems like that.鈥 The question is: What changes could actually get through Congress? Both parties agree that ObamaCare has problems. Premiums are rising sharply, and the pool of enrollees is smaller and sicker than expected. (Sullivan, 10/27)
In other 2016 election news聽鈥
After the fact, Trump often likes to claim he had great foresight. But then it turns out there is slim evidence to back up his assertions. ... So this聽made us wonder when Trump started to claim that he warned against the structure of the Affordable Care Act when it was passed in 2010. As he put it, he claimed that 鈥渢he concept is no good鈥 and that 鈥渋t鈥檚 going to be a disaster鈥 and that he knew the premiums were going to soar. Is that remotely true? (Kessler, 10/28)
High drug prices, not ObamaCare, are the public鈥檚 top healthcare priority, according to a new poll released Thursday. The poll from聽The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation finds that 74 percent of the public lists making sure high-cost drugs are affordable as a healthcare priority for the next President and Congress. (Sullivan, 10/27)