Ted Cruz’s healthcare sham: Repealing Obamacare and replacing it with nothing (Marxists Crying!)

One of the biggest criticisms of the GOP when it comes to healthcare reform is that, for all their blustering and fulminating against the Affordable Care Act, they just can’t seem to put together a coherent plan of their own. The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent leafed through his calendar this morning and discovered that Republicans have promising to unveil their big Obamacare replacement for 50 months, a gestation period that is about twice as long as that of actual, real-live elephants.

Instead of substantive plans, they give us vague notions of plans spelled out in newspaper Op-Eds. Typically they don’t progress much further beyond gauzy promises of cheap, comprehensive health coverage rooted in “freedom” and “patient-centered reforms.” In the past couple of weeks alone we’ve seen healthcare “plans” put forward by former Sen. Phil Gramm (the “freedom option”), a trio of Republican senators (“freedom and flexibility” for the states), and a trio of House Republicans (“an off-ramp out of ObamaCare toward patient-centered health care”). It’s all the same non-specific prattle we’ve heard countless times over the past five years, and it’s intended to give the impression that the GOP is finally, finally, finally getting serious about healthcare reform.

Now we have a brand new entrant into this discussion: Ted Cruz. The junior senator from Texas unveiled his very own healthcare plan this week and actually managed to put his determinedly vague colleagues to shame by crafting an actual piece of legislation that you can hold in your hands. Make no mistake: his proposed bill is a pile of hot garbage that will screw over countless people. But hey, at least it’s a plan!

Cruz has long been adamant that every single word of the Affordable Care Act should be repealed, but his proposed legislation only takes out part of the ACA. It would immediately repeal Title I of the Affordable Care Act, which would eliminate the individual and employer mandates, the state-based exchanges, subsidies for purchasing insurance, the protections for people with pre-existing conditions, the requirement that kids can stay on their parents’ plans until age 26, the prohibition on capping lifetime benefits – basically most of what people love and hate about the ACA. Simply put, Cruz wants to strike down most of the policies the ACA put in place to protect consumers from the worst abuses of the insurance market, and in their place he’d put… nothing.

Instead, Cruz’s big idea is to make it easier for insurance companies to sell policies across state lines – an idea that gets incorporated into pretty much every Republican healthcare reform proposal. Let insurers compete with each other in a nationwide market, the thinking goes, and the invisible hand will push healthcare prices down to the point that people can actually afford them and get the coverage they want. That’s Cruz’s fanciful vision, at any rate. The reality would be far different – insurance companies would set up shop in the most lightly regulated state(s), sell cheap-as-dirt barebones plans to healthy individuals, and leave the sick and the elderly priced out of the market or denied coverage altogether. The market would be completely skewed in favor of people who don’t actually need healthcare.

Cruz’s plan is extreme, and fits in well with his “burn it all down” approach to governing. Most conservative health policy proposals envision some form of subsidy to help people buy insurance (Cruz believes that the ACA’s subsidies are “insidious”) or a lighter-touch approach to regulating the insurance market that puts in place at least some form of protection for people with pre-existing conditions. But that’s not part of the Ted Cruz vision for America’s healthcare policy. If you’re a low-income person who doesn’t qualify for expanded Medicaid (or lives in a state that rejected the Medicaid expansion), you’ll just have to hope that premiums will drop low enough so that you’ll be able to afford something (assuming you’re not already sick).

And that helps to explain why the Republicans still haven’t united around an alternative to the Affordable Care Act. Some Republicans are willing to grapple with the reality that crafting healthcare policy requires trade-offs and striking a balance between subsidizing coverage and regulating the insurance market in order to expand coverage. Influential conservative legislators like Ted Cruz, however, don’t inhabit that reality. He clearly doesn’t care about expanding coverage and doesn’t seem overly concerned with the idea of returning to the bad old days of insurance company discrimination. His main concern is getting rid of Obamacare – the free market will take care of the rest.

"If we must have an enemy at the head of Government, let it be one whom we can oppose, and for whom we are not responsible, who will not involve our party in the disgrace of his foolish and bad measures." - Alexander Hamilton

"We don't intend to turn the Republican Party over to the traitors in the battle just ended. We will have no more of those candidates who are pledged to the same goals as our opposition and who seek our support. Turning the Party over to the so-called moderates wouldn’t make any sense at all." -- President Ronald Reagan

"A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice." - Thomas Paine 1792

"It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men." - Samuel Adams

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams

The Cruz proposal is not the absence of any plan for providing access to healthcare, it is a plan for accountability of the individual in making effort to provide for personal responsibility for health care. This is not a punishment for negligence, it is a promise of reward for prudent preparation for contingencies.

Perhaps this is a nuanced difference that the denizens at Salon cannot either imagine or accept.

There shall never, ever, be any reliable plan for assuring that EVERYBODY, regardless of circumstances, will be guaranteed medical treatment upon demonstration of need and application for the indicated procedures. It is fiscally impossible, because the system is far too open-ended, and eventually, somebody in the bean-counter corps will apply a cost-benefit ratio, and either apply a limit, or deny the treatment.

And there is no way to adequately treat hypochondria or conscious personal health neglect.

Nonsense.

Medicaid will still be preserved for those who can’t take care of themselves.

But that’s no reason to eliminate heath care choice for every one else.

Which is what Obamacare has done - and what good is having health insurance if its full of deductibles and you can buy it only once a year?

Remember every Democrat voted for the current travesty and they can’t defend a law they themselves can’t explain to the voters.

If Obamacare stands and amnesty is passed with the blessing of a RINO President, 100 million illegal invaders will flood our doc-in-the-boxes, urgent clare clinics, and hospitals seeking out access to quality healthcare for the first time in their lives.

The Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion states that the chronic disease prevalence for American citizens is overwhelming:

Chronic diseases are the leading cause of death and disability in the United States. They cause 7 out of 10 deaths each year. Heart disease, cancer, and stroke alone cause more than 50 percent of all deaths each year. In 2008, 107 million Americans—almost 1 out of every 2 adults age 18 or older—had at least 1 of 6 reported chronic illnesses:

Cardiovascular disease
Arthritis
Diabetes
Asthma
Cancer
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)

Now add another 100 million illegal invaders, and the consequence of overwhelming our healthcare system becomes evident. Millions of Americans will unnecesarrily die from lack of access to quality health care due to illegal invaders monopolizing the scare medical treatment resources.

Many of us Freepers will die because the doctor we didn't get to choose had to obey the government-mandated order to make illegal invaders healthy first!

General Health Status of American Citizens

The reality would be far different – insurance companies would set up shop in the most lightly regulated state(s), sell cheap-as-dirt barebones plans to healthy individuals, and leave the sick and the elderly priced out of the market or denied coverage altogether. The market would be completely skewed in favor of people who don’t actually need healthcare.

What a butt load of lies.

Repealing ObamaCare does not repeal Medicare.

The best plan I can think of would repeal ObamaCare in total and then pass a law outlawing state regulation of healthcare insurance across state lines.

Competition drives down cost.

People could buy healthcare insurance from any state over the internet or over the phone.

To ensure the economic health of the healthcare companies the healthcare insurance companies would be required to have an annual audit by an independent auditing firm. The audits would be audited by a federal audit agency every four years to ensure that the audits were not fraudulent.

It does not take huge government programs to get stuff done.

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