Heres a dose of reality to the repeal Obamacare crowd. It aint going to happen. Conservatives lost that fight when we lost the US Senate race in Minnesota in 2008, and with that, the 60th vote. We lost it again when the US Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of the individual mandate in June 2012. And so where to go from here. Repeat what Senator Ted Cruz tried to do last fall? Unless the White House and both houses of Congress are in Republican hands, that strategy is dead on arrival... To present a credible political alternative in 2014, conservatives can not just say repeal. We need to reform and improve on Obamacare. Why? Because the Affordable Care Act simply does not do would it claims it would: lower the cost of health care. Americans want an affordable health care system WITH universal coverage. Thats not a liberal or conservative talking point. Its just political reality in 2014. So why not give to them? One of the fundamental flaws in the conservative approach to health care policy is that few—if any—Republican leaders have articulated a vision of what a market-oriented health care system would look like. Hence, Republican proposals on health reform have often been tactical and political—in opposition to whatever Democrats were pitching—instead of strategic and serious. AND we can use market based incentives to get us to universal coverage. How? Well, Avik Roy shows us that Switzerland and Singapore are leading the way in this regard. In 2012, U.S. government entities spent $4,160 per capita on health care. That’s more than twice as much as Switzerland, and nearly five times as much as Singapore. Mr. Roy outlines the following four-step plan: 1) deregulate Obamacare’s insurance exchanges, including repeal of the individual mandate, while preserving guaranteed issue for individuals with pre-existing conditions; 2) migrate future retirees onto the reformed exchanges; 3) repeal Obamacare’s employer mandate; and 4) migrate Medicaid acute-care and dual-eligible enrollees onto the exchanges. This is a good start, something that should have bi-partisan support in the next Congress.
Posted on: Tue, 21 Oct 2014 02:59:07 +0000
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