Here's What Trump's New Health Care Executive Order Means for Your Insurance

Here's an explanation of what the executive order is meant to do and what you can do to voice your opinion on the country's health care future.

If you are young and healthy, you will have more and cheaper insurance options. If you are chronically ill or face a costly emergency, this executive order will likely negatively impact you.

Technically, Trump's executive order gives Americans more healthcare options. It allows small businesses to join together across state lines and provide association health insurance plans that would ultimately be cheaper and offer less coverage.

Organizations such as the American Hospital Association have spoken out against this move because it would encourage what some experts call "junk insurance" plans, which typically do not provide comprehensive coverage and would not necessarily be required to adhere to Obamacare mandates such as including people with pre-existing conditions or offering prescription coverage.

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"These provisions could destabilize the individual and small group markets, leaving millions of Americans who need comprehensive coverage to manage chronic and other pre-existing conditions, as well as protection against unforeseen illness and injury, without affordable options," said American Hospital Association Vice President Tom Nickels in a statement.

One of the hallmarks of Obamacare was federal subsidies to insurance companies to provide quality, low-cost healthcare options to financially strapped Americans. The subsidies essentially filled the gap between what someone could afford and the actual cost of the healthcare plan.

The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that the Obamacare subsidies save about $1,000 per person in out-of-pocket expenses. Trump has stated his administration's intention to cease those subsidies, which could lead to less affordable options for comprehensive coverage.

All of this comes after Trump rolled back the Obama administration's mandate that employers offer free birth control coverage, the Department of Health and Human Services ruling also allows institutions to refuse to cover contraception on religious grounds.

To put this in perspective, let's say there's a 25-year-old woman who earns $40,000 per year in Wisconsin as an administrative assistant. If Trump's policies are enacted, her employer could offer her a "slim" insurance plan that offers bare minimum coverage with deductibles in the thousands of dollars. If the woman were to need anything other than the most rudimentary care, such as a cast for a broken leg or treatment for a chronic condition like Crohn's disease, she would face medical bills that could bankrupt her.

Additionally, her employer would not be required to provide free contraceptive coverage, so if she chose to use birth control, she would have to pay out-of-pocket for ($160-$1,600 per year on average) or find an organization that offers free or low cost birth control such as Planned Parenthood (an organization whose funding has been under attack by the Trump administration).

Scenarios like these are why some people choose to go uninsured and hope for the best instead of paying a premium every month for insurance that would ultimately not be enough to cover a medical emergency.