Politico’s Top 2017 Health Care Surprises
By Admin | January 22, 2018
Much was said on Capitol Hill about health care, but not too much was done in 2017. Here are Politico’s 10 key takeaways from the first year of health care under the Trump administration.
- Obamacare has neither been repealed or replaced, as promised.
- Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price spent over $1 million of taxpayer money traveling in private jets, which forced his resignation seven months after taking the job.
- Medicare was to be given power to negotiate directly with drug companies; it wasn’t. Pharmaceutical prices continue to go unregulated.
- The individual mandate, requiring everyone to purchase health insurance, has been killed via tax bill.
- Planned Parenthood will continue to receive funding.
- Vaccine safety was under the political microscope, but nothing happened. Vaccines continue to be supported and considered entirely safe and effective for public health.
- Democrats, who were previously trepidatious about pushing a single-payer health care system, seem to be leaning towards this model for the next round of elections.
- Medicaid, seen as an entitlement, hasn’t been defunded as aggressively as proposed.
- Former Turing Pharmaceutical CEO Martin Shkreli gained notoriety for hiking the prices of AIDS drugs and was also convicted of securities fraud. However, it was threatening Hillary Clinton which landed him in jail.
- Republican Senators Collins and Murkowski, who tend to vote more moderately, find themselves with more power than usual, having the potential to swing votes either way.
For more about Politico’s Top 10, read “Top 10 health care surprises from Year One of Trump.”
