Baby boomers are increasingly nervous they won't have enough money to pay for healthcare in retirement, and with Medicare straining because of rising enrollment, it's unlikely those fears will disappear anytime soon.
In this clip from The Motley Fool's Industry Focus: Healthcare podcast, host Kristine Harjes and contributor Todd Campbell discuss presidential candidates Hillary Clinton's and Donald Trump's plans for Medicare.
A full transcript follows the video.
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This podcast was recorded on Sept. 14, 2016.
Kristine Harjes: With the upcoming presidential election, so much of this could be subject to change. You have two candidates right now that each have their own policy proposals, and there's really no way to predict exactly what's going to happen to Medicare going forward.
Todd Campbell: Yeah. There are some common themes across the two major candidates. Both Clinton and Trump have said that they would like to have Medicare be able to negotiate directly with drugmakers. That's one thing. They both also suggested that they wouldn't be against allowing for the importation of drugs from cheaper countries into the United States, assuming, of course, that you could guarantee the safety and the authenticity of that medication. Clinton has some additional proposals, including expanding Medicare to people who are younger than 65, maybe people as young as 55 would be able to enroll in the program. She's also proposed some caps in out-of-pocket spending on drugs that could help Medicare patients. Meanwhile, Trump has said that he feels it's a third-rail topic, and we shouldn't be looking at reducing benefits to Medicare, we should probably leave it as it is from here.
Harjes: Right. So, it will definitely be an interesting thing to watch going forward. Every time we talk about politics, I feel like we have to mention that given that you can't predict these things, it's very difficult to try to [work] them in to your investing, and this sort of uncertainty touches just about every industry that there is. Unless you want to opt out of the stock market altogether, you have some sort of regulatory risk. But, of course, with the pharmaceutical industry coming under such scrutiny lately, it's a hot topic in these presidential campaigns, and I'm sure we'll be hearing more on it from the two candidates as the election season goes forward.
