President Trump on June 24th signed an executive order that could spark major changes in the healthcare industry.
The key philosophies implemented in this executive order were outlined in author Joseph Gilbertson’s book, “The Opposite of Obamacare” written in 2015. As it happens, the book was written with the intention of feeding free enterprise ideas to a potential (at the time) Trump Administration.
It appears to have worked.
Trump’s executive order, actually dubbed “The Opposite of Obamacare,” directs the HHS to create a range of new rules including requirements for hospitals and insurers to publish negotiated rates for services and requirements for healthcare providers to speak with patients about out-of-pocket costs before services are rendered.
If the plan works as intended, it “will go down as one of the most significant steps in the long history of American healthcare reform,” said HHS Secretary Alex Azar.
“We will empower patients with the information they need to search for the lowest cost and highest quality care,” said Trump. “People have no idea how big it is. Some people say bigger than healthcare itself…For too long it’s been virtually impossible for Americans to know the real price and quality of healthcare services and the services they receive.”
The directive comes weeks after Big Pharma sued the Trump Administration to block a rule that would have forced drugmakers to include the list price of their products in television ads.
“We are fundamentally changing the nature of the healthcare marketplace,” said Trump as he signed the order. “Currently, patients do not have adequate tools to find the doctors who will deliver better health outcomes at an affordable cost.”
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This is a link to the book that inspired the Trump Adminstration, get your copy now!
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The executive order also improves patients’ incentives to shop around for healthcare by expanding the benefits of Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), which are tax-advantaged medical savings accounts designed to help patients with high-deductible insurance plans pay for out-of-pocket medical expenses.
The funds contributed to an HSA are not subject to federal income tax at the time of deposit.
The use of Health Savings Accounts was a key idea discussed in Punching Bag Post author Joe Gilbertson’s 2015 book The Opposite of Obamacare. The book (see link below) is about returning America’s healthcare to a free enterprise system by replacing the ACA’s socialist-leaning policies with a structure that fosters competition.
Like Trump’s directive of the same name, Gilbertson’s proposal seeks to expand transparency and give consumers more control over their healthcare options, taking advantage of free enterprise principles to drive prices down.
While PBP has yet to be contacted by the Trump Administration (the author’s use of a pseudonym, made this difficult), we believe the similarities are too close to be coincidental.
My google search on “The Opposite of Obamacare” yielded this result:
