One glaring example of our current predicament is an embarrassingly disappointing healthcare system that fails to meet the needs of millions of Americans<\/a> who can neither afford adequate medical treatment nor a health insurance plan to help them pay for a doctor or the cost of a hospital stay.<\/p>\n Even as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was being signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2010, it was clear it would need future adjustments. Unfortunately, that necessity has been ignored by President Donald Trump<\/a>, who in both his first and current administrations has found it more beneficial politically to criticize rather than improve Obamacare.<\/p>\n The ACA has helped cut the percentage of Americans without health insurance<\/a> from nearly 16% in 2016 to 8% last year. That means more work needs to be done. But while Trump keeps promising a better alternative to Obamacare, he\u2019s barely delivered on even the \u201cconcept of a plan<\/a>\u201d to improve healthcare access for all.<\/p>\n \u00bb READ MORE: No more gambling with public health: Pa. must ban skill games | Editorial<\/a><\/p>\n Trump proposed an ACA alternative in January that he calls \u201cThe Great Healthcare Plan<\/a>,\u201d but it\u2019s too weak to get the health insurance industry to become a better partner in extending coverage to more Americans. Trump\u2019s plan would instead end the ACA subsidies that have helped millions of people pay for health insurance while cutting prescription drug prices and requiring insurance companies to do a better job reporting their costs and profits.<\/p>\n A National Institutes of Health study concluded the Obama administration \u201cbowed to the demands of the medical industrial complex<\/a> comprised of hospitals, insurance companies, and drug companies\u201d to help it make the ACA law because \u201cit was not politically feasible\u201d to get the bill passed any other way. Unfortunately, the feasibility of improving Obamacare has become even more remote under Trump.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a sign of the political strength of major health insurance companies, including UnitedHealth Group, Cigna, Kaiser Permanente, Elevance Health (the parent company of Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield), and CVS Health, which acquired Aetna in 2018. Those firms have earned more than $9 trillion since the ACA was passed in 2010<\/a>, and show no sign of wanting to ever voluntarily reduce any income derived from federally subsidized premiums paid by Obamacare customers.<\/p>\n It\u2019s time to stop the giveaway to health insurance companies and reconsider an idea that has failed past attempts to survive Washington politics. Americans need a public option similar to Medicare that would allow eligible participants of all ages to pay adjusted health insurance premiums based on their incomes. Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands have similar programs<\/a>, and President Harry S. Truman proposed a public option for the United States more than 70 years ago, but Congress wouldn\u2019t approve it.<\/p>\n \u00bb READ MORE: The World Cup is in Philadelphia. So far, the city is delivering. | Editorial<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cMillions of our citizens do not now have a full measure of opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health,\u201d Truman said in 1945<\/a>. \u201cMillions do not now have protection or security against the economic effects of sickness. The time has arrived for action to help them attain that opportunity and that protection.\u201d That same speech could be made today, but this Congress and president seem even more in thrall to the powerful insurance companies that today employ more than three-fourths of all U.S. doctors<\/a>.<\/p>\n The American Medical Association, in a recent report, cited Washington\u2019s kowtowing to corporate healthcare interests trying to maximize profits as a contributing factor to a current statistic that one in five physicians in the United States say they plan to retire<\/a> within the next two years. \u201cMany physicians find themselves practicing in direct conflict with their own values, the values that led them to a career in healthcare in the first place,\u201d said the AMA report.<\/p>\n With thousands of doctors abandoning their practices and millions of Americans still unable to afford health insurance, it\u2019s time for a bolder, better healthcare system. This country is too prosperous to have so many Americans worrying themselves to death while trying to figure out how to afford decent medical care.<\/p>\n This nation cannot afford our president\u2019s weak ideas to fill huge gaps in America\u2019s healthcare delivery system. Franklin Delano Roosevelt showed how it\u2019s done in steering the passage of the Social Security Act in 1935<\/a>. Lyndon B. Johnson got both Medicare and Medicaid through Congress 30 years later<\/a>. And Obama opened the door for a successor to craft the next phase of the Affordable Care Act. It\u2019s time for Trump to stop promising something even better and produce it.<\/p>\n Inquirer Opinion Newsletter<\/p>\n Future product<\/p>\n Be the first to hear about a roundup of Inquirer columnists\u2019 perspectives on what\u2019s happening now in our city, our nation, and our world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min Long ago, when most Americans left the house for mass entertainment, they flocked…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":721283,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[97,252,253,310428],"class_list":["post-721282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-public-option-healthcare-system-insurance-obamacare-subsidies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=721282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721282\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/721283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=721282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=721282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=721282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Inquirer](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1782223748_991_I_circle_black.png\")
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