Obama out, Obamacare gone? - What is going to happen with Obamacare under Trump presidency?
Key element of so called Obamacare is the fact that every single American is able to receive affordable health insurance regardless of any preexisting medical condition. As a result of Obama’s health policy more people obtain health insurance in the US than ever before, over 90%. The Republican party (GOP) has been trying to come up with an alternative replacement bill for a long period of time but hasn’t been able to yield a coherent alternative yet. So what is president-elect Donald Trump going to change to improve the US health system and to keep everybody’s premiums low? Controlling the White House and the Congress, the GOP would be able to cut federal funding for ACA and thereby repeal Obamacare as they tried early in 2016. Last time the bill was vetoed by President Obama but sending the replacement bill to a Republican president would mean the ruin of Obama‘s key achievement. During his presidential election campaign president-elect Trump called the ACA a “disaster“ which he wants to get rid of but he has never given any alternative replacement proposals yet. Thus, nobody really knows what the 20 million Americans who are covered by Obamacare have to expect in the near future, in particular considering the latest and surprising Trump announcement after meeting up with President Obama in the Oval Office a week ago. President-elect Donald Trump indicated that he compromises on his core pledge to replace Obamacare. In addition President Obama promised to support the Trump administration in changing Obamacare in case it will lead to improvement of healthcare and an enhanced number of insured people. But Obama also pointed out that he doesn‘t see any strategy to boost the current system. Furthermore, it remains completely uncertain in which degree personal interests like investments of the brother of Trump’s so-in-law who would experience severe financial loss due to a scrap of Obamacare influence Trump’s prospective decisions.
All in all, the future of Obama’s most important heritage remains in the dark and will underlie speculative guesswork until Trump enters the White House in mid of January 2017.