Donald Trump And Health Care: Firm Run By Trump's Top Adviser Sounded Alarm About Obamacare Repeal

President Donald Trump has promised his plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act will improve America’s health care system — but the company run by one of his top economic advisers has suggested the opposite, documents reviewed by International Business Times reveal.

Trump has been relying on advice from billionaire Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, whom the president appointed to run the White House Strategic and Policy Forum. As the White House and Republican lawmakers were gearing up to introduce the American Health Care Act (AHCA), Blackstone issued a stark warning, asserting the effort to repeal Obamacare could wreak havoc on the American health care system.

“President Trump has expressed support for widespread health care reform and the repeal of all or portions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” the company said in documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission a few weeks after Schwarzman convened the first meeting of the White House council. “An increase in the size of the uninsured population or a reduction in funds presently available to patients as a result of repeal of significant portions of the ACA could adversely affect multiple businesses in the health care industry.”

The Congressional Budget Office on Wednesday issued a report saying the House version of the AHCA would result in an additional 23 million Americans having no health insurance. CBO estimates that under Obamacare, 28 million Americans would lack insurance within a decade, but if the AHCA passes, that figure would swell to 51 million.

On the same day the CBO report was issued, the Australian published an interview with Blackstone President Tony James in which he touted the potential for lucrative business opportunities to emerge from the expected health care chaos.

“In developed markets, it is very costly and there is a lot of turmoil,” the newspaper quoted James as saying during a discussion about health care. “Turmoil means opportunities for us, and while we will not win every time, so long as there is enough turmoil we will win.”

Blackstone invests in the health care sector — in late 2016, it bought hospital staffing firm TeamHealth in a $6 billion deal that Blackstone officials praised during a recent earnings call.

In its SEC documents, Blackstone made specific projections about the potential adverse effects stemming from Trump’s health reform initiative. The company said the repeal of the Affordable Care Act could adversely affect “pharmaceutical companies that benefit from purchases by individuals covered by government-subsidized insurance, hospitals that may be required to increase write-offs for bad debt resulting from the inability of insured patients to pay for care and insurance companies that have developed effective plans for participating in health care exchanges.”