Posted on 08/19/2015 6:47:09 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Scott Walker is putting forward a plan to replace Obamacare that conservatives and voters generally ought to find very attractive. It takes a scythe to Obamacare’s regulations: The plan restores states’ pre-Obamacare role as the lead health-care regulators. The individual and employer mandates would vanish. The federal government would no longer determine which benefits are “essential” for everyone’s health insurance. At the same time, the plan would enable anyone who wants catastrophic health coverage to get it.
The plan has four key parts. First, Obamacare’s regulatory centralization would be reversed. Second, tax credits would be provided to enable people to buy insurance. These credits would vary by age but would not vary by income — avoiding a feature of Obamacare that has added a great deal of complexity and has reduced incentives to work. Third, states would gain authority and responsibility over much of Medicaid. Federal aid per capita would be capped so that states no longer had an incentive to spend more money. Fourth, health savings accounts, which allow people to save tax-free to pay out-of-pocket medical expenses, will be greatly expanded.
Obamacare’s two main political strengths have been that it provides coverage to a lot of people who lacked the income to get it, and that it protects sick people from facing discrimination by insurers. Walker’s plan shows that these benefits need not be tied to Obamacare’s intrusive regulations and taxes. We have reason to think that roughly as many people would get coverage under Walker’s plan as under Obamacare. Some of that coverage will be less comprehensive, but much of it will be cheaper and provide more financial protection.
Insurers, meanwhile, will be prevented from discriminating against sick people so long as they have maintained their insurance coverage. People will thus have both the incentive and the means to get covered. For those who are already sick and don’t have coverage, the plan provides for high-risk pools — but the need for them would diminish with time.
Walker’s plan draws on the best conservative thinking on health care and suggests that the party is in the process of building a consensus. It is very similar to plans that already have the support of the chairmen of the Senate Finance Committee and the House Budget Committee. Senator Marco Rubio has advanced similar ideas in outline form as well. Walker has presented the best plan yet from a presidential candidate, and we hope that other candidates will feel no compunction about copying him.
Better we address some of the problems in the medicine business itself (see Denninger) and return to a genuinely free marketplace.
Walker is Jeb without the Bush pedigree. The GOPe’s puppet version of the “common man”.
No kidding.
Yes. Very simply, it is not the job of the federal government to be involved in healthcare. Healthcare does not appear in the Constitution.
This is just a desperate plea for attention.
I specifically remember Walker criticizing Cruz for fighting against Obamacare almost two years ago. Now Walker has had a “Whitehouse Road” Conversion and has proceeded into fooling quite a few people into thinking he is a conservative warrior.
Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI): “I believe the Affordable Care Act is anything but affordable, and will have a negative impact on the economy of my state… But I don’t extend that to the point that we should shut down the government over it.”
RE: Yes. Very simply, it is not the job of the federal government to be involved in healthcare. Healthcare does not appear in the Constitution.
OK, how do you propose to get rid of medicaid and Medicare, or even Social Security?
We don’t need replacement to go back to the way things were prior to Obamacare.
The govt in the middle of all of this is the issue.
RE: The govt in the middle of all of this is the issue.
Then we STILL need replacement.
And oh BTW, NOBODY in this crop of candidates will propose taking away government role at all.
NOT TRUMP, NOT CRUZ, NOT CARSON.
RE: Turn it over to the states over a period of 4 years. Get the Feds out of it completely, including taxes and funding
So, you would propose an overhaul of our payroll tax system, social security ( which is deducted together with Medicare from salaries ), force all Seniors currently on Medicare to go to a state run system, and close the Department of Health and Human Services?
Since you don’t like Walker’s proposal, tell me who among these crop of candidates will propose doing that... TRUMP? CRUZ? CARSON?
Replacement schemes sound good when bumped against Obama Care, but still include way too much government interference. The reason that health care was even a candidate for government take over is because of decades of government interference in the first place.
if you allow people to shop across state lines does that not become interstate commerce??
the fed regulate all interstate commerce...
just a thought
That word “replace” is the fly in the ointment. It does NOT need to be replaced. The government must be removed entirely from any connection to health insurance and medicine. Were that to happen the only downside would be that millions of bureaucrats will lose their jobs. Other than that insurance will get radically cheaper as medicine-healthcare if you will- will become radically cheaper. Medicine will become a prestige profession again and attract the best and the brightest. Another major boost to cheap and ever better medicine would be the elimination of all federal government ties to education so that education would become cheaper and ever less encumbered by the weight of drivel and PC and redundant and useless staff.
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