Democrats think they can win the shutdown battle by focusing on healthcare, one of just three issues where polling shows they have an advantage. Republicans, who have been on the defensive regarding healthcare for more than a decade, need to go on offense again.
Here are three ways the White House can seize back the narrative.
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Give Patients More Control
Anyone who has filled a medical prescription knows the painful process. A slip of paper turns into a long line at the pharmacy and confusing payment structure from the insurance company. Standing at the intersection of pharmacies, insurance plans, drug makers, and patients are pharmacy benefit managers. Labelled “middlemen” by their critics, PBMs determine the price, availability, and cost breakdown of patients’ medicine.
Their lack of transparency and potential conflicts of interest (the top three PBMs are owned by insurance companies and control 80% of the drug claims) have contributed to 30% higher prices and limited availability for patients.
While PBMs need reform, government alone isn’t the answer. Fortunately, serious-minded private sector efforts are afoot to allow patients to shop around. For example, Mark Cuban has launched a plan that allows consumers to shop for drugs directly from providers. Not only does this create more availability, but the prices are transparent and patient control expanded.
Reduce Healthcare Prices
As Americans’ satisfaction with healthcare quality declines, unhappiness with cost has led the way. Just 19% were satisfied with prices in a recent Gallup survey.
Consider an emerging model known as direct primary care. Championed by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., direct primary care shifts the system toward one centered on value. DPC is a monthly subscription like Netflix or Apple Music. For a cost averaging between $50 and $150 per month, patients bypass the health insurance system and visit participating doctors. The model increases access and quality, lowers costs, and solidifies the relationship between doctors and patients.
Here again, no legislation or executive order is needed. Working with private sector innovators, conservatives can follow the lead of Kennedy, who, as a former Democrat serving in the Trump administration, has already reshuffled traditional orthodoxy. There are already nearly 3,000 DPCs across this country in all 50 states.
Prioritize Alzheimer’s Disease
While government need not be the only solution, federal regulators have an important role in ensuring rules keep up with medical innovation. As new drugs become available to combat deadly diseases, doctors need the ability to prescribe these innovative medications to their patients.
Take Alzheimer’s, the cruel memory-robbing illness responsible for up to 80% of all dementia cases. Seven million Americans suffer from Alzheimer’s today, a number projected to double by 2050. It has no cure and takes more lives than breast cancer and prostate cancer combined. Yet promising new drugs can slow the disease in early stages, and a new Food and Drug Administration-approved blood test makes it easier to get diagnosed.
Additionally, polling data shows that large bipartisan majorities support prioritizing Alzheimer’s. More than nine in 10 (92%) of voters support requiring Medicare to cover blood tests that can detect the disease before symptoms are visible.
With President Donald Trump making changes at a pace like no president before him, giving patients access to treatments that have already been approved by the FDA should be a no-brainer, creating a win, win, win scenario where patients win with early detection, caregivers win with early detection, and Republicans win politically by addressing this important issue.
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A generation ago, one transformational Republican president introduced Alzheimer’s to much of the country by announcing his own diagnosis as “the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life.” Today, Trump can help finish the fight Ronald Reagan started.
Not only would millions of lives be touched for the better, but the GOP could seize back the mantle of healthcare champions for the long term, and well beyond any government shutdown.
Charles Sauer is the president and founder of the Market Institute.