Reactions to President Trump’s plans to revamp Medicare — outlined in an executive order released Thursday — split largely along partisan lines, with most medical professional societies preferring to remain on the sidelines for now.
Rob Davidson, MD, an emergency physician in Michigan and executive director of the Committee to Protect Medicare & Affordable Care, blasted the rule as a “stealth con-job whose true goal is to sabotage Medicare.”
“President Trump’s executive order is nothing more than a cheap PR stunt designed to fool people and which does nothing to reduce prescription drug costs, lower premiums or protect families with preexisting conditions from getting denied healthcare by insurance corporations,” Davidson said in a press statement. “As doctors and medical professionals, the Committee to Protect Medicare and Affordable Care is deeply concerned that Trump’s executive order will open the door for profit-driven insurance corporations to raise costs on seniors, without protections or accountability measures.”
Davidson criticized Medicare Advantage plans — which Trump’s executive order would seek to expand — for their reliance on narrow networks of providers and out-of-pocket cost structures that “discourage less healthy individuals from joining the plans.”
This leaves sicker people in the patient pool in traditional Medicare and further burdens the system, he argued.
Read more: https://www.medpagetoday.com/publichealthpolicy/healthpolicy/82575
