President Trump and senior officials in his administration have been signaling for several months that they would release an updated GOP health-care plan, presumably to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) — which the president still criticizes as a “disaster.” Last week, the president gave a campaign-style speech denouncing Medicare for All and announcing a new executive order (EO) on improving Medicare. If the EO is the administration's much-hyped health-care “plan,” it is a surprisingly lightweight offering.
The EO tasks the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) and officials in the White House with producing several deliverables focused mainly on expanding options in Medicare Advantage (MA), which is the private insurance alternative to Medicare's government-managed fee-for-service (FFS) option.
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