A Small Step In The Right Direction

Generally speaking, I have my differences with the Republican Party. I changed my party affiliation earlier this year to unaffiliated. However, every now and then, the Republicans do something right. What follows is an example. There is no point in detailing an alternative to ObamaCare while President Obama is in office. However, he has approximately six months left. The House of Representatives has now released an alternative. Note that the alternative is being released just as ObamaCare premiums are about to skyrocket (probably right after the November election) and many health insurance providers are leaving ObamaCare. As ObamaCare collapses under its own weight, the Republicans have introduced an alternative. So what is the alternative?

The Weekly Standard posted a story yesterday about the proposed plan.

The article explains:

The proposal pairs an Obamacare alternative with Medicaid reforms and the crucial Medicare reforms (amounting to a kind of “Medicare Advantage Plus”) that Speaker Paul Ryan and House Republicans have long championed. As Ryan put it after the proposal’s release, “The way I see it, if we don’t like the direction the country is going in—and we do not—then we have an obligation to offer an alternative….And that’s what this is.” He called the plan not merely “a difference is policy” but “a difference in philosophy.”

Here are a few highlights from the plan:

1. It would dramatically lower health-care premiums. Obamacare drives up premiums though its inept and arrogant way of addressing preexisting conditions, and by mandating coverage of things that people don’t want. The GOP plan would drive down premiums by repealing Obamacare, putting people in control of their own health-care dollars, and letting them shop for value.

2. It would restore liberty while stopping Obamacare’s consolidation and centralization of power and money. Private American citizens would no longer be compelled (for the first time in all of United States history) to buy a product or service of the federal government’s choosing. The flow, like a river, of money and power to Washington, D.C., would be reversed.

3. It would lower Americans’ tax burdens. In addition to raising taxes, Obamacare raises spending—by about $2 trillion over a decade, per the CBO—at a time when the U.S. government is already almost $20 trillion in debt. The GOP plan would cut taxes even versus the pre-Obamacare status quo while saving hundreds of billions of dollars (and hopefully a trillion dollars or more) in spending versus Obamacare.

4. It would re-attract needed talent to the medical profession and thus improve the quality of care. Who, other than the truly committed few, would want to become a doctor under Obamacare’s regime of bureaucratic control over “health-care providers”? (Obamacare, which effectively bans the building or expanding of doctor-owned hospitals, doesn’t like to call such individuals “doctors.”)

5. It would stop Obamacare from being a vehicle for executive lawlessness. At practically every turn, the Obama administration has tweaked, altered, and even funded parts of Obamacare without congressional involvement. Three major casualties of Obamacare have been the rule of law, the separation of powers, and the Constitution.

6. It would stop Obamacare’s taxpayer funding of abortion. As the write-up for the GOP plan notes (citing the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office), insurance “plans that cover abortion are receiving federal taxpayer dollars under Obamacare.” Indeed, “California now requires all health insurance plans to cover abortion services.” Under the GOP plan, federal taxpayer dollars wouldn’t be allowed to fund abortions.

7. Even beyond these six ways, it would also lead to most Americans faring much better than under Obamacare. The exact dollar amounts of the GOP’s non-income-tested tax credits aren’t provided, but if they were to be the same as those called for by the 2017 Project, the Hudson Institute, Gillespie, Price, and Walker, most Americans of various incomes, ages, and family sizes would fare much better than under Obamacare. For example, the typical 36-year-old woman who makes $36,000 and buys her own insurance gets $0 under Obamacare, whereas she’d likely get something on the order of a $2,100 tax credit under the GOP plan (See the chart on page 9 of An Alternative to Obamacare for more detail on this point.) This overdue tax cut would be like $2,100 in her pocket.

Please understand–a Democratic President will not approve this plan. The changes made to ObamaCare have been laws not passed by Congress–the rules have been written by President Obama who has no constitutional authority to make those rules. Companies whose owners oppose abortion have been put out of business through executive orders. ObamaCare needs to go. It is expensive, unconstitutional and damaging to our republic. This is another reason the 2016 election is so important.