Joe Biden Has Released His Healthcare Plan. Here’s What It Means for You.

At Tuesday night's debate in Cleveland, Ohio, President Trump lied about the nature of sensitivity training and refused to condemn white supremacist groups.

(AP Photo/Morry Gash, Pool)

By Giselle Balido

August 7, 2020

The Democratic contender promises that as president he will work to protect and build on the Affordable Care Act.

UPDATE (October 23, 2020, 8:05 a.m.): This story has been updated with comments from former Vice President Joe Biden.

Last night, in Nashville, Tennessee, during the final presidential debate, Joe Biden discussed his healthcare plan for Americans by referring to it as Bidencare. 

“My response is, people deserve to have affordable healthcare, period. Period, period, period,” Biden said. “And the Bidencare proposal will in fact provide for that affordable healthcare, lower premiums. What we’re going to do is going to cost some money. It’s going to cost over $750 billion over 10 years to do it. And they’re going to have lower premiums. You can buy into the better plans, the cheaper plans lower your premiums, deal with unexpected billing, and have your drug prices drop significantly. [Trump] keeps talking about it. He hasn’t done a thing for anybody on healthcare. Not a thing.”

According to an analysis by the nonpartisan group Families USA, an estimated 5.4 million people became uninsured between February and May because of job losses. To put that number in perspective: that’s nearly 40% higher than the number of people who lost their job-based coverage during the 2008 recession.

READ MORE: The Unemployment Rate May Be Recovering, but Not for Latinas

ACA a Life Saver

For those without access to workplace coverage and who may not have qualified for Medicare or Medicaid, the federally subsidized plans on the marketplace were often literally a life saver. Before the Affordable Care Act (ACA), they had to buy coverage in a prohibitively expensive market or forgo coverage entirely, putting their health at risk.

Relentless Sabotage

Yet in recent years, enrollment on HealthCare.gov has ticked down, due to what the Democrats call the Trump administration’s relentless “sabotage” of the marketplace.

Presumptive Democratic presidential contende Joe Biden has also blamed the Trump administration’s repeated attacks on the Affordable Care Act in a tweet, and promises that as president he will not only work to protect ACA, but will build on it.

READ MORE: Latino Democrats on the President’s Refusal To Approve COVID Relief: “Trump Doesn’t Care

Biden’s plan, which the former vice president announced in a campaign video, is much more ambitious than ACA. In fact, it has often been called “Affordable Care Act 2.0.” It includes:

  • Expanding ACA so that 97% of Americans are insured. The central feature of this is the creation of a public option, which would be a government-run insurance plan available to anyone. This would cost an estimated $750 billion over 10 years, and will be paid for by reversing some of the Trump administration’s tax cuts and eliminating capital gains tax loopholes for the super rich.
  • Introducing a public health insurance option, like Medicare, that will be available premium-free to people making below 138% of the federal poverty level, as well as to individuals in states that haven’t expanded Medicaid. The 2.5 million people currently ineligible for either Medicaid or private insurance subsidies in those states would be automatically enrolled in Biden’s public option, at no cost to them or the states where they live.
  • Eliminating the 400% of federal poverty level income cap for tax credit eligibility, and lowering employees’ maximum contribution for coverage. Under Biden’s plan, no one would be required to pay more than 8.5 percent of their income toward health insurance premiums.
  • Prohibiting health care providers from “surprise billing” patients with out-of-network rates. A 2016 Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that 70 percent of “individuals with unaffordable out-of-network medical bills did not know the health care provider was not in their plan’s network at the time they received care.”
  • Combating the rising cost of drugs by allowing Medicare to negotiate lower prices with drug manufacturers.
  • Lowering the Medicare eligibility from 65 to 60. “Even after the current crisis ends, older Americans are likely to find it difficult to secure jobs,” Biden said in a Medium post. The additional cost, he added, will be financed out of general revenues to protect the Medicare Trust Fund.
  • Expanding funding for community health centers that serve patients regardless of their immigration status or their ability to pay.
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