Posted on 12/16/2025 3:03:08 AM PST by karpov
Democrats think they have Republicans on the run on healthcare, but maybe not if the GOP fights back. On Friday House Speaker Mike Johnson offered a better alternative to the Democratic proposal to extend pandemic-era subsidies for ObamaCare: Expanding insurance choices for employers and workers. How dare he.
House Republicans plan to vote on their bill this week. The left’s chief criticism is that it doesn’t extend the sweetened ObamaCare subsidies, which expire on Dec. 31. “This so-called plan is the height of irresponsibility,” declared House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. But how is it irresponsible to increase healthcare options at lower cost for taxpayers?
Democrats boosted the ObamaCare subsidies in 2021, purportedly to help those who lost coverage during the pandemic. But the pandemic has long been over, and the richer subsidies are an inducement for fraud. They have also spurred workers to ditch employer coverage for heavily subsidized ObamaCare plans that raise costs for taxpayers.
The GOP bill would make it easier for small businesses to escape the ObamaCare regulatory morass. The bill would expand so-called association health plans that let small employers unite to sponsor group health plans. These plans would reduce premiums by expanding risk pools and give small employers more leverage with insurers.
The plans wouldn’t have to adhere to many costly ObamaCare rules, though they still couldn’t charge more for workers with pre-existing health conditions. Worker premiums for association plans would likely be lower than for ObamaCare plans. Workers might also see an increase in take-home pay if their employer’s insurance costs fall.
Association plans won’t work for all small businesses, but the GOP bill offers another option: Health reimbursement arrangements. These would let employers make tax-free payments for employees to buy their own health insurance in lieu of sponsoring a group plan.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Full blown socialized medicine?
Association (i.e. Chamber of Commerce) Health Plans
Stop-Loss Deregulation [safer for smaller employers to partially self-insure]
Individual Coverage HRA Expansion [lets employers fund employee purchases of individual market coverage]
Pharmacy Benefit Manager Transparency [adds lots of reporting requirements]
Cost-sharing reductions [lower deductibles and out-of-pocket costs for lower-income ACA silver plan enrollees. “CSR funding would reduce premiums by approximately 12 percent”]
This makes modest changes around the edges.
Obamazilla is still on the loose.
“These would let employers make tax-free payments for employees to buy their own health insurance in lieu of sponsoring a group plan.”
More subsidies. Let my wing of the uniparty try to outbid your wing of the uniparty for the bigger giveaways.
Let’s try something really radical!
How about we get the damn government out of ALL HEALTHCARE related issues? No Zero-Care, no subsidies, no backroom negotiations to bolster drug company profits, nothing to hold over the people to force them into ANYTHING...
For health care, bring on market force:
1. Break most hospitals into two highly competitive entities
2. Convert other hospitals into real estate leasing entities with competing surgical suites and nursing wings
3. Separate out drug coverage so hospital systems can run care coverage systems and cut out insurance company overhead and meddlers.
4. Create interstate drug plans that don’t have to cover every drug. To qualify for exchange listing and federal subsidies, they would have to most (~80% or more) in all important types (large volume recombinant, small volume recombinant, breakthroughs under patent, etc.). Group and exchange plans to offer vouchers at plan set amounts for out-of-formulary drugs. Plans without minimums (or vouchers) could be vended directly to individuals and families. Voucher plans to have experience priced premiums.
5. These plans would be all the doctors (and AI) prescribe for formulary drugs with co-pays equal to manufacturing cost
6. reform medical education, breaking down medicine and dentistry into simpler chunks and start it in the first year of college
7. replace most primary care doctoring with AI
(Insurers would pay human doctors to confirm AI diagnosis, orders for expensive tests[MRI, genetic], prescribe radiation imaging[CT, PET, X-ray]/treatment, and voucher/government co-pay drugs. Other human doctor care would be private pay.)
The “subsidy” you describe is no different than what employees now have with an employer-paid health insurance plan — a tax-free benefit. It’s just that employers can now pay for the employee to get his or her own insurance instead of including them in the employer’s plan.
When will the GOP wake up and remind Americans that a majority of Democrats voted to stop ObamaCare Covid subsidies in January 2026?
They have also spurred workers to ditch employer coverage for heavily subsidized ObamaCare plans that raise costs for taxpayers.
That is exactly right. And those folks are kvetching mightily about losing their gravy. People with multiple cars, boats, motorhomes all getting approved for subsidies.
Its bs and ridiculous.
But here we are.
The problem is failure to enforce anti-monopoly laws, but that’ll never happen as the (D)(R) Uniparty apparatchiks will never want to offend one of their largest donor bases.
Unfortunately, the runaway costs due to Obamacare will cripple the national debt (almost there), sucking all of the economic air-out-of-the-room due to criminal profits for investors in BIG pharma, medicine & insurance.
Did you know that the Nixon pushed through the HMO Act (which started this nightmare) on behalf of the Kaiser family?
Then Reagan pushed through EMTALA, which killed Charity Hospitals?
This was all (D)(R) Uniparty corruption from the very start...
*America First -or- Balkanization Next*
Jeffries wouldn’t know a good (or honest) idea if it bit him in the a$$.
Well, Speaker Johnson was on Fox a couple weeks ago and pointedly said that Obamacare was too ingrained to get rid of, so I am fully expecting more failure and Republican losses in the mid-terms.
They had better NOT screw this up. If costs go up after the reform they are toast.
Also it is great that they are focusing on small business but they need to find a way to lower costs and improve plans for individuals.
20 to 30K for a family plan with 5-10K out of pocket expenses is not affordable, nor is it really insurance.
“The bill would expand so-called association health plans that let small employers unite to sponsor group health plans. These plans would reduce premiums by expanding risk pools and give small employers more leverage with insurers.”
The risk pool could be the entire nation if they would break up the state-by-state divide and conquer monopoly allowing insurance to extend across state lines. There is no need to regulate insurance state-by-state. Why, for example, should my medicare gap insurance cost any more or less than it does anywhere else as it does?
Health care is a mud pit of a mess designed for confusion and profiteering.
“Association plans won’t work for all small businesses”
WHY NOT?
Hardly, not at all iln fact.
You are right, incrementalism is not the answer.
OK - 47 versions of it.
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