right now the affordable care act covers free preventative care, free birth control, subsidies for low income clients. we don t know whether these items are in jeopardy? exactly. we don t know what will happen or what items in jeopardy or if all will be in jeopardy. the health and human services, they re the ones that decide what goes under this preventative medicine umbrella. which tests are covered under that. the ones you brought up some examples, other examples vaccinations, men s aneurysm screenings, the list goes on and on. if these get taken away if hhs decides they re not going to cover some of these, patients have to start paying for them or be denied, won t be able to get through them through insurance, it will be cash out-of-pocket. the details are fluid right now. we don t know what s going to happen but some of these could be taken away. dr. torres, thank you so much for that. again, it does remain unclear whether the new administration will fight to rip up obamacare
msnbc medical contributor dr. john torres. it s great to see you. good to see you. i hope you can help us shed light because it gets in the weeds it gets very confusing. the executive order doesn t specify what those federal agencies are supposed to do to make sure it doesn t have a fiscal impact, but you have a list of five things that trump could change pretty quickly if he wants to about our health care. right now the big thing, like you said, there s a lot of unknowns. there s a lot of nuances here. if he changes some of these things, some he could sign and change right away, but some would take work. here s a list. one of the things we re talking about is birth control. free birth control has been a mandate under obamacare. that could possibly go away. these are preventive services that health and human services decide to cover. they could change that. free prooeventive care on top of that. what does that mean? mammograms, cervical cancer
screenings, aneurysm screenings. this list goes on and on. health and human services decides what s on that list. they could change that easy and that will put the burden on patients. if the burden is on them, they can t afford it. the list goes on and on with the different things that cost sharing you have on there, which is about how much i pay versus how much the government pays? exactly. cost sharing means right now with preventive services, they re free under the affordable care act, but if they take those off, cost sharing will be with the patients. the mandate itself, the mandate you have to have insurance. you have to have, that could possibly go away. if thatoes away, that will put thwhole foundation on a shaky basis and cause problems. counting the number of people covered right now. they re saying if affordable care act goes away or some changes take place, millions of people aren t covered. everything you re talking about are for people on some form of obama