Here's why Obamacare would likely make any coronavirus vaccine free for patients

[CousinIT]

https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-vaccine-free-for-patients-result-of-obamacare-2020-2

Here's why Obamacare would likely make any coronavirus vaccine free for patients — and prove critical in fighting the disease

. . .

Yet public concern is rising that the US's expensive healthcare system could create a barrier discouraging people from seeking life-saving care for COVID-19 — the disease caused by the coronavirus — and accelerate its spread around the country.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar heightened those anxieties this week when he initially said the government couldn't control prices for coronavirus treatments because "it needed the private sector to invest." He later walked back those remarks after triggering massive backlash.

. . .

Yet one layer of the healthcare system could help Americans save a lot of money on a potential coronavirus vaccine: the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

A little-known provision of Obamacare would likely make any coronavirus vaccine free for most people with health insurance. Plus, the law expanded insurance coverage for roughly 20 million Americans and widened access to medical care. Those components underscore the law's broad reach across the healthcare sector and its potential to form a pillar in a federal strategy to combat the spread of a deadly, unknown disease.

"There's an important link between broader healthcare policies like the Affordable Care Act and responding to a potential public health emergency like this virus," Larry Levitt, the executive vice president for health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told Business Insider.

[procon]

1. Trump is probably working to block this benefit.

He's so OCD over anything connected to Obama, he'd rather see people die than do the right thing. Then there's the profit motive, he's making it comfortable for investors to make a killing off of human suffering, to help with the patients.