Trump Scores for the Sick

DEMOCRATS have tried to make Tuesday’s elections about health care. As with most issues, they equate government spending with success — liberals claim they care more than conservatives because they spend more of other people’s hardearned money.

Full disclosure: My husband, Russ Vought, is deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget. But speaking strictly as the mother of a child with a life-threatening genetic disease, I know that other policy changes can make a critical impact on the lives of sick patients without government spending.

And so does the Trump administration, which has taken several vital steps to reorient the federal bureaucracy toward the chronically ill and individuals with pre-existing conditions.

First, the administration has made expanded access to prescription drugs a top priority. In the fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30, the Food and Drug Administration OK’d 971 generic drugs — a record, breaking the old mark of 937 approvals set just last year. Compare that to the 651 green-lighted in 2016 and the 492 the year before under President Barack Obama.

The more rapid approval of generic drugs has had an impact on patients’ wallets — and lives. A recent Council of Economic Advisers report found that the slowdown in prescription-drug-price growth over the past two years saved consumers $26 billion through July.

When it comes to brand-name drugs, Team Trump has worked hard to bring new and potentially innovative treatments to the sickest of patients. Toward that end, President Trump signed the “right-totry” law in May, allowing terminally ill patients the right to access experimental treatments that may save their life, without government bureaucrats interfering.

Second, the administration has expanded access to more coverage options — particularly short-term plans. That can provide important protections to individuals who develop a pre-existing condition while on one of these plans.

To individuals who can’t afford pricey ObamaCare plans, changes to shortterm, limited-duration insurance will give alternatives with more reasonable rates — and a guarantee that they can maintain their coverage should they develop a costly illness that requires treatment after their plans’ expiration date.

Placing politics over people and sticking to their “ObamaCare or nothing” mentality, Democrats in Washington, and in the states, have actually worked to block access to these plans.

Third, the administration’s embrace of state flexibility in Medicaid will transform that program. By approving work requirements and other innovative waivers requested by states, Team Trump is letting local officials move to get able-bodied adults off welfare and into work.

The changes will also help return the Medicaid program’s focus to the populations for which it was originally designed: those who are ill and too poor to afford care and to the disabled.

Disability groups aligned with Democrats didn’t mention it at the time, but ObamaCare effectively created a two-tier Medicaid system — with individuals with disabilities and other vulnerable populations at the back of the line.

Under the Affordable Care Act, states get 90 cents from Washington for every dollar they spend covering able-bodied adults, but only 50 cents to 75 cents for covering individuals with disabilities. That has led states that expanded Medicaid under ObamaCare to treat people with disabilities as lower priorities.

No rational person would publicly advertise a system that forces hundreds of thousands of individuals with disabilities to wait before receiving needed care. But ObamaCare did just that.

Thankfully, President Trump is steering the federal bureaucracy away from such flawed priorities, in ways that provide important benefits to individuals, like my daughter, who have serious medical conditions. For the sickest among us, those changes mean more than any Democratic campaign ad — or a flawed system like ObamaCare.

It means keeping government out of the lives of individuals trying to receive the best care possible at the best price.

And it means the freedom to be able to focus on one’s health rather than being weighed down by burdensome regulations that intertwine our current health-care system.