President Trump’s healthcare vision put American patients, families, and seniors first by providing more choice, better care, and lower costs. He worked from day one to put healthcare back where it belongs—in the hands of the American people.
The Trump Administration took historic actions to lower prescription drug prices, expand access to affordable coverage, deliver hospital and insurer price transparency, and allow Americans to access trusted doctors. President Trump guaranteed to always protect people with pre-existing conditions, and he signed legislation to end surprise medical billing after repeatedly calling on Congress to take action.
Administration Achievements
GREAT HEALTHCARE FOR AMERICANS
Empowered American patients by greatly expanding healthcare choice, transparency, and affordability
- Eliminated the Obamacare individual mandate—a financial relief to low- and middle-income households that made up nearly 80 percent of the families who paid the penalty for not wanting to purchase health insurance
- Increased choice for consumers by promoting competition in the individual health insurance market leading to lower premiums for three years in a row
- Under the Trump Administration, more than 90 percent of U.S. counties have multiple options on the individual insurance market to choose from
- Offered Association Health Plans, which allow employers to pool together and offer more affordable, quality health coverage to their employees at up to 30 percent lower cost
- Increased availability of short-term, limited-duration health plans, which can cost up to 60 percent less than traditional plans, giving Americans more flexibility to choose plans that suit their needs
- Expanded Health Reimbursement Arrangements, allowing millions of Americans to be able to shop for a plan of their choice on the individual market and then have their employer cover the cost
- Added 2,100 new Medicare Advantage plan options since 2017, a 76 percent increase
- Lowered Medicare Advantage premiums by 34 percent nationwide to the lowest level in 14 years. Medicare health plan premium savings for beneficiaries have totaled nearly $1.5 billion since 2017
- Improved access to tax-free health savings accounts for individuals with chronic conditions
- Eliminated costly Obamacare taxes, including the health insurance tax, the medical device tax, and the “Cadillac tax”
- Worked with states to create more flexibility and relief from oppressive Obamacare regulations, including reinsurance waivers to help lower premiums
- Released legislative principles to end surprise medical billing
- Finalized requirements for unprecedented price transparency from hospitals and insurance companies so patients know what the cost is before they receive care
- Took action to require that hospitals make the prices they negotiate with insurers publicly available and easily accessible online
- Improved patients access to their health data by penalizing hospitals and causing clinicians to lose their incentive payments if they do not comply
- Expanded access to telehealth, especially in rural and underserved communities
- Increased Medicare payments to rural hospitals to stem a decade of rising closures and deliver enhanced access to care in rural areas
Issued unprecedented reforms that dramatically lowered the price of prescription drugs
- Lowered drug prices for the first time in 51 years
- Launched an initiative to stop global freeloading in the drug market
- Finalized a rule to allow the importation of prescription drugs from Canada
- Finalized the Most Favored Nation Rule to ensure that pharmaceutical companies offer the same discounts to the United States as they do to other nations, resulting in an estimated $85 billion in savings over seven years—$30 billion in out-of-pocket costs alone
- Proposed a rule requiring federally funded health centers to pass drug company discounts on insulin and Epi-Pens directly to patients
- Ended the gag clauses that prevented pharmacists from informing patients about the best prices for the medications they need
- Ended the costly kickbacks to middlemen and ensured that patients directly benefit from available discounts at the pharmacy counter, saving Americans up to 30 percent on brand name pharmaceuticals
- Enhanced Part D plans to provide many seniors with Medicare access to a broad set of insulins at a maximum $35 copay for a month’s supply of each type of insulin
- Reduced Medicare Part D prescription drug premiums, saving beneficiaries nearly $2 billion in premium costs since 2017
- Ended the Unapproved Drugs Initiative, which provided market exclusivity to generic drugs
Promoted research and innovation in healthcare to ensure that American patients have access to the best treatment in the world
- Signed first-ever executive order to affirm that it is the official policy of the United States Government to protect patients with pre-existing conditions
- Passed Right To Try to give terminally ill patients access to lifesaving cures
- Signed an executive order to fight kidney disease with more transplants and better treatment
- Signed into law a $1 billion increase in funding for critical Alzheimer’s research
- Accelerated medical breakthroughs in genetic treatments for Sickle Cell disease
- Finalized the interoperability rules that will give American patients access to their electronic health records on their phones
- Initiated an effort to provide $500 million over the next decade to improve pediatric cancer research
- Launched a campaign to end the HIV/AIDS epidemic in America in the next decade
- Started a program to provide the HIV prevention drug PrEP to uninsured patients for free
- Signed an executive order and awarded new development contracts to modernize the influenza vaccine
Protected our Nation’s seniors by safeguarding and strengthening Medicare
- Updated the way Medicare pays for innovative medical products to ensure beneficiaries have access to the latest innovation and treatments
- Reduced improper payments for Medicare an estimated $15 billion since 2016, protecting taxpayer dollars and leading to less fraud, waste, and abuse
- Took rapid action to combat antimicrobial resistance and secure access to life-saving new antibiotic drugs for American seniors by removing several financial disincentives and setting policies to reduce inappropriate use
- Launched new online tools, including eMedicare, Blue Button 2.0, and Care Compare, to help seniors see what is covered, compare costs, streamline data, and compare tools available on Medicare.gov
- Provided new Medicare Advantage supplemental benefits, including modifications to help keep seniors safe in their homes, respite care for caregivers, non-opioid pain management alternatives like therapeutic massages, transportation, more in-home support services and assistance
- Protected Medicare beneficiaries by removing Social Security numbers from all Medicare cards, a project completed ahead of schedule
- Unleashed unprecedented transparency in Medicare and Medicaid data to spur research and innovation
COMBATTING THE OPIOID CRISIS
Brought unprecedented attention and support to combat the opioid crisis
- Declared the opioid crisis a nationwide public health emergency
- Secured a record $6 billion in new funding to combat the opioid epidemic
- Signed the SUPPORT for Patients and Communities Act, the largest-ever legislative effort to address a drug crisis in our Nation’s history
- Launched the Initiative to Stop Opioid Abuse and Reduce Drug Supply and Demand in order to confront the many causes fueling the drug crisis
- The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) awarded a record $9 billion in grants to expand access to prevention, treatment, and recovery services for States and local communities
- Passed the CRIB Act, allowing Medicaid to help mothers and their babies who are born physically dependent on opioids by covering their care in residential pediatric recovery facilities
- Distributed $1 billion in grants for addiction prevention and treatment
- Announced a Safer Prescriber Plan that seeks to decrease the amount of opioid prescriptions filled in America by one-third within three years
- Reduced the total amount of opioids prescriptions filled in America
- Expanded access to medication-assisted treatment and life-saving Naloxone
- Launched FindTreatment.gov, a tool to find help for substance abuse
- Drug overdose deaths fell nationwide in 2018 for the first time in nearly three decades
- Launched the Drug-Impaired Driving Initiative to work with local law enforcement and the driving public at large to increase awareness
- Launched a nationwide public ad campaign on youth opioid abuse that reached 58 percent of young adults in America
- Since 2016, there has been a nearly 40 percent increase in the number of Americans receiving medication-assisted treatment
- Approved 29 state Medicaid demonstrations to improve access to opioid use disorder treatment, including new flexibility to cover inpatient and residential treatment
- Approved nearly $200 million in grants to address the opioid crisis in severely affected communities and to reintegrate workers in recovery back into the workforce
- Secured commitment from President Xi to schedule fentanyl and its analogues to keep the lethal substance off our streets and out of our communities
- Prescription opioid overdose deaths in 2019 continued to fall compared to the period from 2016 to 2018
- Heroin overdose deaths in 2019 continued to fall compared to 2016–2018
- 2019 brought a 27 percent decrease in heroin production in Mexico, the largest single-year decrease in history
