The White House has proposed an initiative it calls the “Great Healthcare Plan” and has urged Congress to implement the various measures within. The Great Healthcare Plan is a series of health proposals with the main aim of making healthcare more affordable.

The proposals center around key areas:

- Lowering Drug Prices: Some of the policy proposals center around finding avenues to lower prescription drug costs of Americans. This is to be accomplished in several ways:

- Codification of President Trump’s “most-favored nation” pricing, allowing the US to purchase prescription drugs from manufacturers at the same rate as those in other countries.

- Approval and distribution of safer generic pharmaceuticals available over the counter.

- Lowering Insurance Premiums: Some of the policy proposals center around combating rising premium costs for Americans. This will be addressed in the following ways:

- Termination of billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded subsidy payments to large health insurance companies. Instead, that money will go to Americans around the country.

- Introduction of a cost-sharing reduction program.

- Termination of the program that provides kickbacks paid by pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) to the large brokerage middlemen that deceptively raise the cost of health insurance.

- Holding Big Insurance Companies Accountable: The policy proposals also aim to tackle the legalese that big insurance companies use to escape accountability:

- Rates and coverage comparisons must be provided upfront and in “plain English” (to avoid intentionally misleading language).

- Insurance companies will have to publish the percentage of their revenues paid out to claims (as opposed to overhead or other costs) on their website.

- Insurance companies must post online about average wait times for health insurance claims and the percentage of claims rejected.

- Maximizing Price Transparency: The policy proposals also deal with the issue of price transparency. Any insurance company that accepts Medicare and Medicaid must post their pricing and fees in their place of business.

- Insurance companies must answer clearly and honestly about how much they will charge for insurance.

The proposals are still in their early stages and do not contain much detail. FNA Insurances, Inc. will continue to monitor the progress of these policy proposals in Congress and will update this document when significant movement is made.

You can read the White House Memorandum HERE.