As Republicans struggle, Obamacare's architects outline how it could be fixed
"There's nothing insurance companies hate more than uncertainty, and one of the things they do to respond to uncertainty is to increase their premiums," Ezekiel Emanuel, a bioethicist and University of Pennsylvania professor, said in a Capital Download interview Tuesday at the Aspen Ideas Festival. Premiums for those who buy insurance through the Obamacare exchanges, already rising, would increase more, pricing some Americans out of the market. Those who get insurance through their employers also would feel the effect as hospitals spread the costs of treating the uninsured.
"The notion that anyone in America is going to be better off if the Affordable Care Act crashes and burns is ludicrous," he told USA TODAY's video newsmaker series. "All of us will pay for it in the end. There is no free lunch here."
Emanuel played a key role in the Obama White House in devising the Affordable Care Act. But he also met with Donald Trump three times since the November election to discuss health care policy, most recently at the White House in March. (It's all in the family: Emanuel's brother Rahm, now Chicago mayor, was Obama's chief of staff. His brother Ari is a Hollywood agent who has ties to Trump and encouraged the president-elect to talk with him.) Zeke Emanuel's latest book, Prescription for the Future: The Twelve Transformational Practices of Highly Effective Medical Organizations, was published this month.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/06/27/ezekiel-emanuel-kathleen-sebelius-donald-trump-obamacare-senate-republicans/103231860/#
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