Critics of former President Donald Trump are expressing increasing worry about what effect a potential second term for him would have on Medicare and healthcare in the country.
These critics cite several reasons, including a possible move to Medicare Advantage as the default over Original Medicare, and Trump previously stating he was open to making cuts to American entitlement programs.
Cut Worries
During a March interview with CNBC, Trump was asked if he was open to cutting entitlements like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid as president, to which the former president responded by saying he was open to cuts.
“There is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements in terms of cutting and in terms of also the theft and the bad management of entitlements, tremendous bad management of entitlements,” said Trump. “There’s tremendous amounts of things and numbers of things you can do.”
Project 2025
Critics of Trump, including his presidential opponent Kamala Harris, have sought to tie Trump to a right-wing think tank project known as Project 2025 as a reason why a Trump presidency would result in cuts.
“When you read Donald Trump’s 2025 agenda, you will see he intends to cut Social Security and Medicare, give tax breaks to billionaires, end the Affordable Care Act, and more,” Harris wrote in a July X post. “We are not going back.”
Rejecting the Plan
Trump has come out to deny any association with Project 2025 after it began getting negative coverage in the media.
“I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. “I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.”
Not Convinced
However, Trump’s critics have accused the former president of lying about his association with Project 2025, and see the recommendations it makes as a blueprint for a potential Trump presidency because of involvement in the project from Trump administration officials.
“He’d certainly like us to believe that. But that statement shouldn’t be the end of the matter, and not simply because more than two dozen former Trump administration officials are involved in Project 2025,” said Healaine Olen in an MSNBC opinion piece. “It’s because many of its planks read like a continuation of his first term. That includes the section on Medicare and other health care initiatives, which is not getting the attention it deserves.”
Medicare Advantage
One major concern critics have with a Trump presidency is the possibility of Medicare Advantage being made the default option in his administration, which these critics argue would degrade the quality of Medicare and healthcare in the country.
“Pushing people into Medicare Advantage is a recipe for further enriching corporate health insurers at the expense of older adults, destroying Medicare as we know it. It compounds health inequities. Vulnerable Americans are likely to lose access to their choice of doctors and face barriers to getting the care they need,” says Diane Archer, president of Just Care USA.
Data Against Medicare Advantage
Critics point to analyses of Medicare Advantage that show bad outcomes compared to traditional Medicare beneficiaries as a reason to be wary.
A July Wall Street Journal analysis found that individuals enrolled in Medicare Advantage through UnitedHealth were 15 times more likely to be diagnosed with diabetic cataracts than normal Medicare beneficiaries.
Other Bad Outcomes
According to a May report from the Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), Medicare Advantage patients who undergo certain surgeries had higher mortality rates compared to those on traditional Medicare.
“Medicare Advantage (MA), the privately-administered version of Traditional Medicare (TM), is causing significant harm to America’s patients, providers, and health care system. The insurers who run MA plans claim that they lead to better patient care and outcomes while saving money, but this is far from the truth,” said the report.
Getting People Sick
Certain critics look cynically at Medicare Advantage, accusing it of creating incentives to keep people sick.
“The plans will get more for people who are more sick, so there’s significant incentive for the plans to make their enrollee population appear as sick as possible,” David Lipschutz, co-director of the Center for Medicare Advocacy, told Salon in a piece published this week.
Overpaying for Worse Care
Medical Doctor Ed Weisbart, who once had a business in health insurance, told Salon that this system has been created to benefit corporations at the expense of regular Americans.
“We’ve created a system where we’ve invited for-profit corporations to drain the Medicare Trust Fund . . . and we overpay them to kill people,” Weisbart said.
Connection With 2025
As Trump continues to deny connections and agreement with Project 2025, his critics are increasingly keen to connect him to it while worrying about the implications for the country.
“It’s just telling that you’ve got an authoritarian playbook that sort of, at every pass, seems to be more focused on driving up corporate profits at the expense of the American people,” said Andrea Ducas, vice president of health policy at the Center for American Progress.
Republican Cuts
As Project 2025’s shadow looms large over the Trump campaign, his fellow Republicans also aren’t helping the case of whether Medicare would be on the chopping block during his future presidency.
In March, 80% of Republicans in the House released a plan that would have made cuts to Medicare and Social Security.
