Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton talked — briefly— about Medicare, Social Security and the Affordable Care Actlast night during the third and final 2016 presidential debate.
|Related: Trump short on details for health, retirementpolicy
|The candidates met in Las Vegas, in a session moderated by FoxNews anchor Chris Wallace.
|Organizers said Wallace would ask the candidates about thefederal budget deficit, and about federal "entitlement"programs — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and a few other bigsocial welfare programs.
|The candidates spent most of the night talking aboutinternational trade, other foreign policy topics, abortion and eachother.
|Related: Clinton Medicare plan could cover more, costmore
|Toward the end of the night, Wallace said the Committee for aResponsible Federal Budget has concluded that neither Clinton norTrump has a serious plan to keep Medicare solvent. He asked thecandidates whether they would agree to a "grand bargain," or acombination of tax increases and benefits cuts, to keep Medicareand Social Security solvent.
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||What they said
Trump said he would save the entitlement programs by cuttingtaxes and growing the economy. Economic growth will improveentitlement program solvency, he said.
|Related: Employers might like Hillary Clinton's Medicarebuy-in plan
|"And one thing we have to do is repeal and replace the disasterknown as Obamacare," Trump said. "It’s destroying our country, it’sdestroying our businesses ... . If we don't repeal and replace it,it's probably going to die of its own weight. But Obamacare has togo."
|ACA premiums are going up from 60 percent to 80 percent thisyear, and more than 100 percent next year, Trump said.
|Clinton wants to keep the Affordable Care Act and make it evenworse, Trump added. "And it can't get any worse," he said."Bad health care at the most expensive price."
|Clinton said Trump's plan to repeal the ACA would hurtMedicare.
|"The Affordable Care Act extended the solvency of the Medicaretrust fund," Clinton said. "So, if he repeals it, our Medicareproblem gets worse. What we need to do is go after the long-termhealth care drivers. We've got to get the cost down, increasevalue, and emphasize wellness. I have a plan for doing that. And Ithink that we will be able to get entitlement spending undercontrol with more resources and smarter decisions."
|Related: A look at Trump's latest claim about theACA
|Clinton said that she would not cut entitlement programbenefits, and that she would strengthen the Social Security trustfund with an increase in taxes on the wealthy.
|"My Social Security payroll contribution will go up, as willDonald’s, assuming he can't figure out how to get out of it,"Clinton said.
|"Such a nasty woman," Trump said.
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Allison Bell
Allison Bell, ThinkAdvisor's insurance editor, previously was LifeHealthPro's health insurance editor. She has a bachelor's degree in economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter at @Think_Allison.
