Trump teases new healthcare plan to replace Obamacare
CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz joins ‘The Sunday Briefing’ to weigh in on Trump’s plan to overhaul U.S. healthcare, new data linking GLP-1 drugs to lower colon cancer deaths and the growing cases of ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome.’
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President Donald Trump has again hinted at plans to replace the Affordable Care Act, teasing a possible Republican alternative during a recent interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham.
On Sunday, Dr. Mehmet Oz, the head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), elaborated on what such a plan might entail, emphasizing greater consumer choice, lower prescription drug costs and expanded access for small business owners.
“People will decide which doctors they want to keep. They’ll pay for the programs they think are most valuable to them,” he told Peter Doocy on “The Sunday Briefing.”
“We can save enough money in the ACA as it’s currently structured if we adjust where the money’s invested and drive prices down… to actually give people some money back, and we want that.”
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Mehmet Oz, Administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, speaks during a press conference on health care fraud enforcement at the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. on June 30. (Mandel Ngan/AFP)
Oz continued, telling Doocy the next important step involves “bring[ing] people off the sidelines,” noting that many small businesses are unable to afford expensive commercial insurance but could afford to purchase an ACA program.
“Empower them, put some of the money in their hands, let them buy the policy that suits their needs,” he continued, going on to mention the Trump administration’s recent announcements regarding Most Favored Nation drug pricing.
Oz argued that, by forcing the pharmaceutical industry to do what’s right and allow Americans to pay the same prices as European consumers, healthcare expenses can drop “dramatically.”
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A selection of injector pens for the Wegovy weight loss drug are shown in this photo illustration in Chicago, Illinois, on March 31, 2023. Weight loss drugs have become central to the affordability discussion. (Jim Vondruska/Reuters)
Increasingly popular GLP-1 obesity medications have been at the center of the discussion, with the Trump administration announcing agreements with pharmaceutical giants Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk — who manufacture drugs such as Zepbound and Wegovy — earlier this month.
Such agreements are said to lower the cost of the drugs for many Americans, including those on Medicare.
“We’re gonna be able to get Americans to lose about 125 million pounds over the next year by dropping the price of these weight loss drugs that are very effective,” Oz said.
“They’re not a cure for obesity, but they help you get back to your fighting weight. The value to that of the U.S. economy, the health economy, is massive because you will actually pay for these drugs with just the savings from reducing heart attacks and kidney failure and dementia and all the things like hypertension and diabetes that cause those problems.”
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Oz’s discussion comes two months before the Affordable Care Act’s subsidies are set to expire, an area of particular concern in Washington, D.C.
Trump previously told “The Ingraham Angle” that, instead of money going to insurance companies, he would like to see money going into accounts that enable people to purchase their own health insurance.
