Posted on 03/05/2017 6:15:34 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Republican leadership's plans for the Obamacare repeal were recently leaked, though "repeal" is perhaps too strong a word. "Tweaks" more accurately describes the work of Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and other House Republicans. It does not go back to ground zero, where this disaster began. Instead, the plan is to go for "Obamacare Lite." It's simply a different version of Obamacare — a Republican version of Obamacare. It's how President Obama himself might have done it.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has said, "The best interest of the country would be achieved by pulling out Obamacare, root and branch." More recently, Ryan reiterated that the House plans to repeal Obamacare, adding that "you can't" repair "a collapsing law." Ryan has also said that repeal of Obamacare is entitlement reform.
Like Obamacare, the plan has an individual mandate through fines for those who don't keep continuous coverage. Like Obamacare, it has a Cadillac tax, which will eventually impact most insurance plans. Most egregiously, however, the bill would create a new entitlement through refundable tax credits. Republicans appear to be "reforming" an entitlement by "replacing" it with ... another entitlement.
This is not repeal. It's tinkering around the edges, and it's failing to keep campaign promises. A truly conservative agenda for repealing Obamacare is getting rid of it — all of it — and going back to 2009 to enact various improvements to the insurance market.
We can address regulations that increase costs by returning regulation of the health insurance industry to the states. Why should the federal government not negotiate Medicare Part D benefits to lower prices? Why can't health savings accounts be used to buy health insurance?
Conservative grassroots activists stand 100 percent behind the efforts of Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky., Mike Lee, R-Utah, Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and members of the House Freedom Caucus and the Republican Study Committee to repeal Obamacare and replace it with a patient-centered alternative. Specifically, we endorse the Obamacare Replacement Act, introduced by Paul and Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C.
This bill provides a complete reworking of our healthcare system, focusing on real patient-centered alternatives. It starts by repealing every word of Obamacare and its regulations. It also legalizes affordable health insurance coverage, expands the use of HSAs to include buying health insurance, and equalizes the tax treatment for insurance so that individuals receive the same tax deduction that employers receive to help pay for coverage.
Additionally, the bill allows organizations and non-profits to band together and negotiate lower prices for health plans in a group market. It gives patients with pre-existing conditions a two-year open enrollment period under which they can obtain coverage.
Lastly, the Paul-Sanford plan repeals Medicaid expansion. Two-thirds of people who received Medicaid coverage after Obamacare were already eligible for it prior to expansion. The bill allows states to apply for waivers to set up Medicaid programs that best fit their needs. All these steps will increase choices, increase ways to pay, and increase portability, the lack of which exacerbates the problem of pre-existing conditions. Above all, it lets individuals have the freedom to buy coverage that suits them, not the dictates of bureaucrats in Washington.
However, even if this legislation passes, it is not the end of the story. There is still more work to do to make the market work more efficiently and provide genuinely affordable healthcare. Block grants for Medicaid, state innovation grants, and federally-funded high-risk pools — there are plenty of conservative ways to restore control of healthcare to the patient, if Republicans have the boldness to seize the opportunity.
At the very least, however, they must rework the current plan. It doesn't get us back to square one. It takes the rare chance to deliver on campaign promises made for the better part of a decade and it squanders them. Given a chance like this, Americans deserve a better plan than this. It's up to Republicans to give it to them — and soon.
Adam Brandon (@adam_brandon) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. He is president and CEO of FreedomWorks.
Ryan plan: more statism.
Paul-Sanford plan: a step in the right direction.
PING!
Paul Ryan - the Eddie Haskell of the Republican Party. Every time I see him behind the President I see knives sticking out of Trump’s back.
Repeal the ACA completely. The states that chose to expand Medicaid will need to find additional sources of funding. Not federal government money. However, patients under treatment, must be transitioned, not dropped.
The Rand Paul/Sanford plan does the best of the competing plans I have heard of to lessen federal government involvement and give the consumer more freedom. As the author says, the Paul Ryan plan is another federal government Frankenstein monster tied up in a Republican bow—ObummerCare Lite.
Told ya so. Ryan has too much financially invested in maintaining obamacare to let it go. Any “plan” that does not totally repeal is a fraud. I expect the Republicans to end up with Single Payer as a “total repeal,” though. “We can’t allow people to lose their insurance,(sniff). The oratory here all assumes that Insurance is the requirement, not medical care. If everyone has “insurance” but can’t get anything for it or it impoverishes them be keeping medical costs high and deductibles super high, the pols have succeeded so long as everyone is “covered” on paper.
someone tell rand that the election is over. he’s still way too in love with the cameras.
Paul Ryan is either bribed or blackmailed. Tyrant.
Neither. He’s part of the machine. A very big part. He doesn’t need to be bribed or blackmailed. He’s just another ‘Lifer’ that has wanted to be a politician since he could walk and has learned that it’s all about what you say and promise, not what you deliver.
The Ryan plan is doomed. It already has three Republican Senators against it — Rand paul, Mike Lee, and Ted Cruz (the three you’d expect.) I wouldn’t be surprised to see Ben Sasse join them.
Ryan keeps ringing his bell, "Repeal and replace."
I don’t trust Paul Ryan. I don’t like him and being speaker makes it more pronounced.... he appears to know more than he’s saying and what he says is probably not the truth, ...I don’t know if any politician is capable of being honest and above board. I don’t know what he has up his sleeve on healthcare, but I don’t think it’s anything good or what was promised. Keeping it under lock and key should tell us something is not according to hoyle.
Their plan is better, but both plans in a way further distort the healthcare market for the worse. Simply any favorable tax treatment for health insurance payments raises costs. We have that currently with the tax deduction for employer-provided coverage. In that sense, the “Cadillac tax” at least makes a start in pulling that back. But either the tax credit that Ryan’s plan has and the tax deduction that Paul’s plan has equalize the market in the wrong direction by expanding that to non-employer plans. The only correct way to deal with that is to start phasing out the special tax treatment for employer-provided coverage (even if non-employer coverage is given equal treatment during the phase out).
IMHO, the “repeal and replace” meme is bass-ackwards. Why not “replace” and then “repeal”?
As part of the “Replace” program,
1. Do away with the fines for NOT buying Obama-care.
2. Do away with mandates that require every healthcare insurance policy to cover the same laundry list of health problems.
3. Allow individuals to deduct their healthcare insurance premiums from taxable pretax income just as corporations do.
4. Eliminate the “Use it or lose it” feature of HSAs.
5. Limit the kinds of health care that Hospital Emergency Rooms are required to provide.
6. Reduce the lush profits of “ambulance chasing lawyers”.
7. Offer basic Medicare to the truly needy.
8. Punish Medicare, tort lawyer and prescription fraud very severely.
9. Permit health insurance sales “across State lines”.
10. Make roll-up of one-state subsidiaries of health insurance companies easy.
11. Watch ObamaCare’s members switch to free-market providers.
After the “self-repeal” of Obamacare is nearly complete, legally repeal it.
IMHO, the “repeal and replace” meme is bass-ackwards. Why not “replace” and then “repeal”?
As part of the “Replace” program,
1. Do away with the fines for NOT buying Obama-care.
2. Do away with mandates that require every healthcare insurance policy to cover the same laundry list of health problems.
3. Allow individuals to deduct their healthcare insurance premiums from taxable pretax income just as corporations do.
4. Eliminate the “Use it or lose it” feature of HSAs.
5. Limit the kinds of health care that Hospital Emergency Rooms are required to provide.
6. Reduce the lush profits of “ambulance chasing lawyers”.
7. Offer basic Medicare to the truly needy.
8. Punish Medicare, tort lawyer and prescription fraud very severely.
9. Permit health insurance sales “across State lines”.
10. Make roll-up of one-state subsidiaries of health insurance companies easy.
11. Watch ObamaCare’s members switch to free-market providers.
After the “self-repeal” of Obamacare is nearly complete, legally repeal it.
That IMO is completely backwards. (Although the Trump team has already done away with enforcement of #1.)
First, it would be “fixing Obamacare” rather than getting rid of it, and second, it would be disastrous policy. Whenever you offer a tax credit or deduction for something you are subsidizing it, making it more expensive, and encouraging markets to be distorted to fit more stuff under the deduction or credit.
In this case, you would be making far worse the distortion that we already have by allowing corporations to give employees tax free “healthcare”. That’s what has led to kitchen sink coverage and inserted third parties into the payment of every little healthcare expense. This has effectively removed price signals from the market and taken away any incentive for either providers or users of health services to pay any attention to the cost of what is being provided.
Further, you would be giving a big tax break to the wealthiest, as they have pay the highest income tax percentages and so would both get the biggest savings on their insurance generally, and also would have the greater ability to buy the more expensive plans—thus further increasing the break that is given to them. Any time you have any sort of tax break like that you are further breaking the incentive of relatively low tax rates, since tax rates have to be relatively higher to cover the government revenue lost to those breaks. Tort reform, which you are suggesting, would also limit patients’ rights in a way that would likely further erode healthcare quality IMO.
I have no idea what you mean by #10, and the reason most people buy through the exchanges is because they have income above the level of qualifying for Medicaid, but at a level that Obamacare makes their coverage free or nearly free.
Also, there is already great resistance in Congress to undo Obamacare, and if Trump delays even until later this year, the impetus will be weakened, let alone once they are at risk of losing their GOP majority in the House in 2018.
Finally, Trump rightly campaigned on repeal and replace.
The Rand Paul plan is already doomed it has 45 Republican senators who will never vote for it.
HSA's don't have a "use it or lose it" feature. Medical Savings Accounts (MSA's) do.
To what?
I’m thinking of “true” medical “Emergencies”.
That would include tending to bleeding cuts and broken bones, high temperatures, lack of consciousness etc.
That would not include check-ups, vaccinations, well-baby care, cancer screening, cosmetic surgery etc.
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