HEALTH CARE

MEDICARE

The government’s premier health insurance program covers about 57 million people, including 48 million seniors and 9 million disabled people under age 65. It enjoys strong support from voters across the political spectrum, although its longterm financial outlook is uncertain.

CLINTON: She would authorize Medicare to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies, and she supports allowing patients to import lower-cost prescriptions from abroad. Medicare beneficiaries represent a big share of the market for medications.

Clinton would also allow people ages 55-64 to buy into Medicare, although her campaign has not released much detail on how that would work.

TRUMP: He promises not to cut Medicare, and has suggested that other Republicans like House Speaker Paul Ryan made a political mistake by calling for major changes. But it remains unclear how Trump’s proposed repeal of “Obamacare” would affect its improvements to Medicare benefits, including closing the prescription drug coverage gap known as the “doughnut hole.”

Earlier, Trump spoke approvingly of giving Medicare legal authority to negotiate prescription drug prices, but that idea currently is not mentioned in his health care plan. Instead, he also supports allowing drug importation.

MEDICAID

The federal-state program for low-income individuals covers more than 70 million people, from pregnant women and children to elderly nursing home residents. Under Obama’s health care law, states can expand the program to include more low-income adults. Medicaid has sometimes carried a social stigma, but polls show the program has a solid base of public support.

CLINTON: She would work to expand Medicaid in the 19 states that have yet to take advantage of the health law. She’s proposing three years of full federal funding for those states, the same deal given to states that embraced the law right away. TRUMP: In 2015 Trump told an interviewer: “I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican. And I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid. Every other Republican’s going to cut.”

But his campaign plan would convert Medicaid into a block grant, ending the open-ended federal entitlement and capping funding from Washington. Over time, such an approach is likely to result in a big cut.

‘OBAMACARE’

CLINTON: She wants to strengthen Obama’s signature 2010 law, which expanded coverage for the uninsured and made carrying health insurance a legal obligation for most people. Clinton would resolve a “family glitch” that denies health insurance subsidies to some dependents, sweeten subsidies for people buying coverage on the health law’s markets, and offer a new government-sponsored insurance plan to compete with private companies. Her proposals would expand coverage to about 9 million more uninsured people, according to a recent study by the Commonwealth Fund and the RAND Corporation. But Clinton would repeal the law’s tax on high-cost insurance, known as the “Cadillac Tax.” Many economists are critical, saying repeal of the tax would eliminate a brake on costs.

TRUMP: He would repeal the law and start over. Trump has proposed a tax deduction for health insurance premiums, and also allowing insurers to sell policies across state lines, a longstanding GOP idea. Critics say a deduction, usually claimed after the end of the tax year, wouldn’t do much to help lower-income people squeezed to pay premiums. And the idea of selling across state lines has been opposed in the past by state insurance commissioners and attorneys general, who warned that it would undercut consumer protections. The insurance industry is divided, with smaller companies fearing it would favor major insurers.