How would Clinton or Trump impact the country's health care system?

Two separate analyses completed by the Commonwealth Fund and an economist at the Rand Corporation of proposed health care plans from Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump show how each presidential candidate’s plan would affect citizens’ health care throughout America.

Both analyses noted that Trump would repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) if elected to the presidency and Clinton would modify the ACA.

Clinton’s plan, the Commonwealth Fund’s analysis found, would reportedly reduce maximum premium contributions individuals must make to enroll in the benchmark plan and would fix the “family glitch” in the ACA. The plan would also provide a tax credit to a citizen with private insurance whose out-of-pocket and premium health care costs are more than 5% of their income. The tax credit would be up to $2,500 per individual or up to $5,000 per family to offset the cost of out-of-pocket spending, per the analysis.

According to the Rand analysis, three out of four of Clinton’s proposals would increase the federal deficit, ranging from $3.5 billion for the premium reduction to $90.4 billion under the cost-sharing tax credit.

Trump’s plan would repeal the ACA and allow individuals to deduct the full amount of their health insurance premium payments, allow insurers to sell policies across state lines and convert Medicaid to a block grant program, per the Rand analysis.

Trump’s repeal of the ACA would potentially raise the federal deficit. Under the block grant provision the deficit would raise by $500 million, and the tax deduction provision would raise the deficit by more than $41 billion, according to the Rand analysis.

In addition, the sale of policies across state lines would possibly raise the deficit by $33.7 billion, according to the Commonwealth Fund analysis.

The Rand analysis noted that if all of Clinton’s health care provisions were approved, the number of insured would increase by 9.1 million and the federal deficit would increase by $88.5 billion. If all of Trump’s health care provisions were approved, the number of insured would decrease by 20.3 million and the federal deficit would increase by $5.8 billion.

References:

http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/other/2016/sep/2016-candidates-health-proposals

http://www.rand.org/blog/2016/09/estimating-the-impacts-of-the-trump-and-clinton-health.html