by Dr. Eowyn
Yesterday, Oct. 3, 2019, while President Trump was in The Villages, Florida, he fired his first shot to counter Bernie Sanders and other Democrats’ socialist scheme of “Medicare for all”.
See “$16.2 trillion tax hikes to fund millionaire-socialist Bernie Sanders’ Medicare For All plan”
Trump warned: “Medicare is under threat like never before. Almost every major Democrat in Washington has backed a massive government healthcare takeover that would obliterate Medicare.”
Trump announced a new executive order to protect and improve Medicare by:
- Empowering senior citizens by giving them more plan choices, more access to telehealth and new therapies, and more time with providers.
- Streamlining the approval of therapies, while reducing obstacles to improved patient care.
- Improving quality by implementing reforms that better link payments to value.
- Protecting beneficiaries by eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse.
- Maximizing freedom for Medicare patients and providers by reducing regulatory burdens and eliminating unnecessary barriers.
President Trump had already undertaken the following improvements to Medicare and other health plans:
- Lowered Medicare Advantage premiums next year to their lowest level since 2007, a 28% decrease since 2017.
- Lowered Medicare Part D premiums next year to their lowest in the last 7 years.
- Decreased prescription drug prices in 2018 for the first year in nearly five decades.
- Led to the FDA approving a record number of generic drugs in 2017 and 2018 that will improve competition and drive down prices, saving $26 billion through the first year and a half of President Trump’s Administration.
- Laid the foundation to start importing certain prescription drugs that are cheaper in other countries.
- Increased the number of Medicare Advantage plans available to seniors by nearly 1,200 over the last two years.
- Expanded Association Health Plans, making it easier for employers to join together and offer more affordable health coverage to their employees.
- Expanded the availability of short-term, limited duration health plans, which offer flexible coverage options and can be up to 60% cheaper than Obamacare plans.
- Worked to ensure hospitals cannot hide prices for their services, requiring them to publicize more data and put quality and price information into patients’ hands.
- Signed legislation ending “gag” clauses that prevented pharmacists from providing patients with information about lower cost options.
- Signed legislation ending Obamacare’s individual mandate penalty, which forced many Americans to buy health plans they did not want.
- Worked to provide electronic health records to patients by requiring providers to give patients their data.
Meanwhile, this morning’s jobless figures are impressive.
Alexandra Steigrad reports for the New York Post that U.S. unemployment rate fell to a 50-year low last month, dropping to 3.5% and matching a level last seen in December 1969. The jobless rate for Hispanics also hit a new record low, while the jobless rate for African Americans is at its lowest level ever.
The rate of discouraged workers and the underemployed also fell, declining 0.3 percent points to 6.9%, the lowest level in nearly 19 years.
No wonder the Demonrats and the never-Trump RINOs are more crazed and rabid than they’ve ever been, determined to remove this President by impeachment or by outright violence. Former RINO governor of Massachusetts William Weld actually called for Trump to be executed.
Please pray for President Trump.
~Éowyn