President Donald Trump rode re -elected last fall about the concern of voters about the prizes. But because his administration goes back to the federal rules and programs to protect patients against the high costs of health care, Trump threatens to push more Americans into debts, so that the family budgets are already emphasized by medical accounts.
Millions of people are expected to lose health insurance in the coming years as a result of the tax reduction legislation that Trump has signed this month, so that they have less protection against large accounts if they fall ill or suffer an accident.
At the same time, next year a significant increases in the health plan premiums on the State Insurance Market will probably have more Americans to fall for coverage or switch to higher deductible plans for which they have to pay more before their insurance starts.
Smaller changes in the federal rules are also ready to resolve the accounts of patients. New federal guidelines for COVID-19 Allow health insurers To stop covering the recordings for millions, so if patients want protection, some may have to pay out-of-pocket.
The new tax reduction legislation will also increase the costs of certain doctor’s visits, for which copays up to $ 35 require for some Medicaid -gauges.
And for those who do get into debt, there will be less protection. This month, the Trump administration has obtained permission from a federal court Roll back instructions That would have removed medical debt from consumer credit reports.
That places Americans who cannot pay their medical bills that run the risk of lower credit scores, which means that their ability to get a loan or forces them to pay higher interest rates.
“For tens of millions of Americans, balancing the budget is like a cord,” said Chi Chi Wu, a staff lawyer at the National Consumer Law Center. “The Trump government simply throws them off.”
Spokesperson Kush Desai of the White House did not respond to questions about how the policy of the administration will influence the medical accounts of Americans.
The president and his Republican Congress Fund have removed the cutbacks in health care, including hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicaid cuts in the gigantic tax legislation. “You will not even notice it,” Said Trump In the White House after the bill that signed July 4. “Just waste, fraud and abuse.”
But proponents of consumers and patients throughout the country warn that the erosion of protecting federal health care since Trump took on in January, threatens to considerably undermine the financial security of Americans.
“These changes will hit our communities,” said Arika Sánchez, who supervises health care policy in the Non -profit New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty.
Sánchez predicted many more people with whom the center works will end with medical debts. “When families get stuck to medical debts, this hurts their credit scores, it makes it harder to get a car, a house or even a job,” she said. “Medical debts destroy people’s lives.”
For Americans with serious diseases such as cancer, federal protection against medical debts still weakened, said Elizabeth Darnall, senior director of the federal advocacy at the Cancer Action Network of the American Cancer Society. “People will not look for the treatment they need,” she said.
Trump promised a roser future during the campaign last year, promise to “make America affordable again” and “Expand access to new affordable healthcare.”
Polls suggest that voters were looking for lighting.
About 6 out of 10 adults – Democrats and Republicans – say they are concerned about being able to pay health care, according to A recent studyExaggerated worries about the costs of food or housing. And medical debt remains a widespread problem: no fewer than 100 million adults in the US are burdened by a kind of care debt.
Nevertheless, important tools that have helped are to prevent more Americans from sinking in debt, now on the chopping block.
Medicaid and other health insurance programs, in particular, have turned out to be a powerful economic backstop for patients with a low income and their families, said Kyle Caswell, an economist at the Urban Institute, a think tank in Washington, DC
Caswell and others Researchers foundFor example, that Medicaid extension was made possible by the Affordable Care Act of 2010, led to measurable decreases of medical debts and improvements in the credit scores of consumers in states that have implemented the expansion.
“We have seen that these programs have a meaningful impact on the financial well -being of people,” said Caswell.
Trump’s tax legislation – which will reduce more than $ 1 trillion to federal health expenditure in the coming decade, usually due to cutbacks Latest estimates of the non -party -bound Congressional Budget Office. The tax cuts, which mainly benefit rich Americans, will add $ 3.4 trillion to American deficits for more than ten years, calculated the office.
The number of uninsured people could further worry if Trump and his Congress Bonds do not extend extra federal subsidies for Americans with low and moderate incomes that buy health coverage at market insurance market insurance.
This help – determined under former President Joe Biden – lowers the insurance premiums and reduces the registered medical accounts with which they go to the doctor or the hospital. But unless Congressional Republicans act, those subsidies will end later this year, so that many are left with larger accounts.
Federal debt instructions developed by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under the BIDEN administration would have protected these people and others if they could not pay their medical bills.
In January, the agency issued rules that would have removed medical debts from consumer credit reports. That would have helped an estimated 15 million people.
But the Trump government chose not to defend the new regulations when they were challenged in court by debt collectors and the credit agencies, who claimed that the federal agency had surpassed its authority when spending the rules. A federal court in Texas, appointed by Trump, ruled that the regulation should be deleted.
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