Your Money, Your Vote: Making Healthcare More Affordable
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Here's your Money Briefing for Sunday, October 6th. I'm J.R. Whaling for The Wall Street Journal. This is the fourth and final installment of our special series, Your Money, Your Vote. Today, we're focusing on how the 2024 presidential candidates say they'll tackle the rising cost of health care. In 2022, U.S. health care spending reached $4.5 trillion, averaging nearly $13,500 per person, and it's projected to keep rising, according to National Health Expenditures data. Rising costs can make budgeting for care difficult, especially since patients can often be in the dark about the price of their health care treatments ahead of time. People like Jasmine Duran. She's 28 years old and lives in Arizona.
She gave birth to her child a year ago and needed to undergo fertility treatments, leading to some surprise bills.
We had to do like all of these other treatments in such a long process that all had co-pays for every single time I came in of like $50, literally every single visit. And I was there on like a weekly basis getting different treatments done.
And figuring out what her bill would be at the end of it was tricky.
Our total bill for the hospital luckily ended up being $5,000 for me and $3,000 for my daughter. But again, no idea until after. Nobody could tell me anything until after everything already happened.
How are rising U.S. health-care costs affecting everyday patients like Jasmine Duran?
And I find that incredibly frustrating.
And going into November, health care affordability is one of the top issues for voters. So what do the candidates' track records tell us about how they plan to tackle health care costs? And how might their proposals change your insurance coverage or the out-of-pocket costs for your future visits? To start off, let's break down one of the biggest topics when it comes to the cost of health care, insurance. The Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as Obamacare, passed in 2010. It granted more than 45 million people some kind of health coverage, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. But some Americans have issues with it and support repealing and replacing the ACA, according to a May 2024 poll from health policy organization KFF.
Larry Levitt is the executive vice president for health policy at KFF. I spoke with him to understand each candidate's approach to health insurance. Larry, how did the Affordable Care Act fare under the Trump administration?
Well, there were a lot of twists and turns when it came to the Affordable Care Act under the Trump administration. On day one, Trump as president vowed to repeal the ACA. There was a very contentious and complex effort in Congress to repeal and replace the ACA in 2017, which ultimately failed.
Outside of the ACA and those efforts that you mentioned, what were some changes that Trump made pertaining to health insurance?
Much of what Trump did was stopped in the courts, but there were a couple healthcare policies he put in place that were quite bipartisan. One was making healthcare prices more transparent. So hospitals now are required to disclose the prices. They charge patients and then they negotiate with insurance companies. Insurance companies themselves are also now required to make the prices they pay for health care transparent. That's got bipartisan support. It's still very complicated. I mean, accessing these prices is incredibly complex for patients, but the prices are out there for people to see. There was also legislation passed during the Trump administration, which President Trump signed, which prohibited surprise medical bills for consumers.
So the These are bills, you know, you go to an emergency room, you end up seeing a physician who's out of your network, or you go in for outpatient surgery, an anesthesiologist is out of your network, and you get this surprise bill.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–1:40
2
How are rising U.S. health-care costs affecting everyday patients like Jasmine Duran?
1:40–11:16
3
What role does the Affordable Care Act play in current insurance coverage debates?
11:16–15:36
4
How did the Trump administration change ACA rules, price transparency and surprise billing protections?
15:36–17:30
Speakers
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