President Donald Trump, with his announcement of an executive order to strengthen, protect and improve Medicare, is "putting a stake in the ground" and letting seniors know he's not going to let anyone touch their health care, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said Thursday.
Speaking before Trump headed to Florida to announce the plan, Azar told Fox Business' Maria Bartiromo that nearly one-third of seniors use Medicare Advantage, the commercial plans seniors can choose that operate like traditional insurance, as opposed to "old fashioned Medicare."
Medicare Advantage is growing rapidly, said Azar, but many of the proposals Democrats are floating for "Medicare for All" will take the program away.
"They would outlaw private insurance and that's what the seniors want," said Azar. "The president is putting a stake in the ground, saying he's going to be the one defending and protecting Medicare for our seniors."
The core problem with "Medicare for All" is that it depends on ending private insurance, said Azar.
"What President Trump's fighting for is personalized patient-centric care that puts you in control and treats you like a human being and not like a number," he said. What could treat you more like a number than of government-run healthcare that undermines Medicare for seniors, reduces access, creates a two-tier system of healthcare as the best doctors and hospitals leave the system?"
Currently, seniors get a "good deal" because Medicare underpays, and the commercial market subsidizes their access to doctors and hospitals, Azar added. But under Medicare for All plans, "that gig is up because it gets spread across 330 million Americans and the doctors and hospitals will flee as they have done in other socialist systems around the world. And that's what President Trump is saying is not going to happen on his watch."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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