If conservatives don’t coalesce behind a new repeal plan soon soon, they will find themselves bystanders as their Republican colleagues link arms with Democrats.
ongressional Republicans were elected to repeal Obamacare. They may run this year as the politicians who saved it. Since late last year, GOP leaders have been planning to pump tens of billions of dollars’ worth of new federal spending into the veins of insurance companies that are hemorrhaging red ink on the Obamacare exchanges.
Avik Roy recently posted a useful and highly informative tutorial on the pitfalls of simply passing the identical Obamacare repeal plan that successfully passed Congress in January 2016 and was vetoed by President Obama. Although the “repeal-and-delay” strategy seems to have been largely endorsed by Republicans in the House, Mr. Roy notes that “According to Louise Radnofsky and Kristina Peterson of the Wall Street Journal, at least three GOP senators—Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker of Tennessee, and Susan Collins of Maine—are wary of repealing the ACA’s funding streams without a replacement already worked out.”
In the interests of further illuminating what’s at stake in this effort to move American health care off the misguided path onto which Obamacare has placed it, I plan to review several “repeal-and-replace” plans to illustrate some of the trade-offs entailed in coming up with such a plan.
On the eve of the next GOP debate, the front-running real estate mogul advanced several ideas that align with many conservative proposals to replace the health care law. He calls for Medicaid to be transformed into a state block grant program and for the tax exemption on employer-based health insurance plans to be extended to individuals who purchase coverage on their own — both longstanding GOP ideas.
