Posted on 11/22/2014 5:15:18 AM PST by Kaslin
It should come as no surprise to Townhall readers that the new Republican congress has no plan to deal intelligently with Obamacare. That’s unfortunate. The worst thing that can happen over the next two years is for president Obama to appear to take the high road – insuring the uninsured and fighting the mean insurance companies – while Republicans rail about the small and trivial parts of health reform.
And the worst thing that can happen is the very thing that is about to happen. So here is some unsolicited advice.
To begin with, Republicans in Congress have created their own internal gridlock on Obamacare. Even if the Democrats all abstained and let Republican legislators do whatever they wanted, the Republicans still could not agree on what to do next.
From the base there is the incessant cry for “repeal.” But as just about every Republican candidate in this last election acknowledged, there can be no “repeal” without “replace.” Otherwise, from 10 to 15 million people will lose their health insurance. However, “repeal and replace” means transitioning from Obamacare to a new system. And no matter how radically different the new system is, it will run the risk of being called “Obamacare lite.”
In fact, there isn’t a single Republican replace plan that hasn’t already been called “Obamacare lite.” And that’s before any negotiation with the other side takes place. Any repeal and replace agreement that has been negotiated with Democrats in Congress and with the White House will almost certainly be viewed with suspicious mistrust by the Republican rank and file.
Fortunately, there is a way out. In going forward, the GOP needs to make clear to its own base and to the Democrats that in any negotiation they will follow five simple rules.
Rule 1: No deviation from a simple vision. The Republican objective for the voting public should be: Keep your job; keep your health insurance; and keep your doctor. The most direct way to get rid of all the anti-job of Obamacare is to repeal the employer mandate. The most direct way to insure that people can keep insurance they like is to repeal the individual mandate. And the most direct way of insuring people can keep their doctor is to deregulate and denationalize the health insurance exchanges.
Rule 2: No backsliding. Negotiators rarely get everything they want. And whatever they get, Republican negotiators will be vulnerable to the charge that they are “helping Obamacare work better.” So here is the answer to that. Anything that leads to more job losses, more loss of insurance people want and more loss of doctors is off the table before anyone even enters the negotiating room. That is the line Republicans must not cross. Making health reform “work better” is okay so long as it moves us in the direction of the vision in Rule 1.
Rule 3: No separate deals for special interests. The reason Obamacare looks like a Rube Goldberg contraption is because it is almost purely the product of special interest bargaining. There are no principles like “justice or “fairness” that guide its content. Now that the impure deed has been done, however, we find that every single interest group wants to renege on its share of the burden.
Should we have a medical device tax? Probably not. Should labor union plans be taxed to subsidize health insurance for their non-union competitors? Absolutely not. Should hospitals have their charity care money restored? If we don’t we are going to be in serious trouble.
But remember why all those provisions are in the law. Special interests went behind closed doors and sold the rest of us out. Now they want to be relieved unilaterally from what they originally agreed to throw into the pot. That shouldn’t be allowed. They cooperated to give us mess that we are in, we need them now to cooperate to get us out of it.
So, nobody gets relief from Obamacare without helping and supporting the overall effort to reform it.
Rule 4. No provisions that produce pain with no gain. It is tempting for Republicans to try to block the system in place that subsidizes health insurance companies that are participating in the exchanges. These are provisions that protect the insurance companies against unexpected losses for the next three years. Some of the subsidies come from redistribution among the insurers themselves. But there is also an (apparently unlimited) taxpayer liability. Do you know anyone who wants to pay taxes to subsidize insurance companies? I don’t.
The problem is, this very same system of transition was adopted for Medicate Part D drug program by a Republican administration. And when Republicans were doing it, other Republicans didn’t complain.
Rule 5. No taking of political advantage, no matter how tempting. Yes, I know. The other side deserves all the political backlash it is getting. Had Barack Obama endorsed John McCain’s health plan, we would have had a better reform, a more workable reform and a more progressive reform than we now have.
But Democrats have already paid a heavy political price for that mistake. Voters elected Republicans this last time around because they want to move on.
YES ...BUT it goes nowhere until the Senate passes it...good grief.
NOW..I guess you don’t realize that the Republican elected Senate of 2014 do NOT actually take office until they are sworn in ...in January, 2015 either.
So you can pass all the Defunding you want in the HOUSE, however until the NEW SENATE takes office... it isn’t going to do anything but shut down the government, which was the wrong thing to do the last time.
It took almost a year for the Republicans to overcome that criticism and get the votes. Other screw ups by Zero helped them recoup.
What happened with 2013 defunding of Obamacare:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/house-passes-bill-funding-government-defunding-obamacare/
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said again Thursday that any bill that defunds the health care law is “dead” when it reaches the upper chamber. Next week, the Senate is likely to strip the language pertaining to Obamacare out of the bill and send it back to the House, daring lawmakers in the lower chamber to vote against a funding bill mere days before the law currently funding the government expires.
Note that Dec 11, 2014 is another ‘Mexican stand off’ with funding the government or not. Another CR can take care of that, but considering the Democrats are losing seats do you really think they are ‘going to go quietly into that good night?”
Harry Reid and the Democrats are the ones still in Senate power until January, 2015...what do you think will happen with all those HOUSE Defunding bills??
So smart ass...’ NEXT!’ means nothing!
The idea that a relatively healthy family has to pay over $1000 a month, with annual deductibles well over $5000 is ridiculous.
Too many lawyers are trying to govern the country...boy, that's really been working out well...
Why should they have a plan, other than a plan to repeal the whole of Obamacare altogether? Let the states deal with healthcare. If they want a plan, let it be that health care and insurance should be able to do business freely across state lines. Since we pay fed taxes, bring out a plan for tax free/deductible health saving plans.
Here, here!
Ditto!
They can do both.
How about funding, can they stop that at least?
As an old insurance agent who specialized in health insurance, I read all these posts about “repeal and go back to what we had” and realize that the majority of those opposed to Obamacare simply do not understand the reality of what has been done by the leftists to our health care system.
We can’t go back. Those policies that have been cancelled under the new law are gone forever because no insurance company will reinstate them after this long a period in time. Why? Because there have been inevitable changes in the health of millions of folks that cannot be reversed or adequately underwritten in terms of costs or coverage. Obamacare threw out the baby (insured public) but it also threw out the bathwater (old insurance). Those policies are gone forever.
Could something similar to the coverage in those old policies be approved by the 50 state insurance commissions at this late? Maybe, if the companies requested a new policy form—but some of the Obamacare changes like insurance without regard to pre-existing conditions make it unlikely and if approved extremely expensive.
Total repeal is a pipe dream of those who simply don’t understand the basic mechanics of the insurance industry.
I agree and appreciate your insights.
Would you care to offer an opinion about whether the large insurance companies backed Obamacare in the hopes of seeing universal purchase compulsion grossing up their premiums and now will never offer cafeteria policies because they want broad subscription?
Paying to grandfather everybody has got to be cheaper than paying for full on Bummercare.
In January 2015 the House can pass defunding bills and the Senate will pass them too, however, if Obama wants he can VETO. Of course they will go ahead and do that knowing the outcome...just to show Americans it is Obama who is the problem.
I expect that with the Immigration issue this is going to get sticky with millions, who benefit from this ‘no deportation and work permits, so expect the outrage toward Republicans.
Boehner has filed the lawsuit about Obamacare...and it is the best option right now, because the Supreme Court will EVENTUALLY hear it..and as the third branch of government, MAYBE enough will vote against Obama’s pet project as they were usurped too. And of course the illegal immigration issue will be included...
How deep does the blackmail go in Congress or Supremes?? NSA has everything on all of them, so what leverage exists is anyone’s guess, if any???
The lawsuit will take time to make it through the courts and Freepers will be disgusted, but that’s our system, not the fault of lawmakers.
I should have marked the ‘blackmail comment’ with a tin foil hat, its not likely....but we do have some strange goings on with people like Roberts, who are not voting as was expected with Bush Appointment.
The insurance companies were given a lot of blame by the Dems for “bad” policies, failing to insure folks with pre-existing conditions like cancer, heart trouble, aids, etc, and other assorted grievances—while at the same time the Dems offered them a bribe of millions of new policyholders with high premiums and high deductibles (they knew this)and, as a kicker, they are indemnified by the taxpayers for losses caused by this law which violates basic principles of insurance.
However, the companies are figuring out they are being bamboozled and some are withdrawing from the ‘free’ market.I suspect this was all part of the plan to go to a national health service completely run by the government. As Barney Frank said in an interview, Obamacare is simply a waystation on the way to a ‘single payer system’. The internal contradictions of the dual system between private insurers and government as the ‘uber-insuror’ will take over eventually.
By the way, most people don’t understand that term “single payer system”. Their eyes glaze over and the Dems/leftists are counting on that obfuscation. And many on the right continue to use the term without explaining it.
It means a complete turnover to the national government of our healthcare delivery. And the public nor many officeholders doesn’t really understand what the left is talking about.
You didn’t ask, and so I forgot to mention the other bribe within the health care delivery system. It went to the hospitals and that’s why their association supports it.
First, look at healthcare delivery pre-Obamacare. All the propaganda about a broken healthcare system was about 30/40 million without insurance. The implication was that they received no healthcare at all, probably because of our corrupt and oppressive capitalistic system.
Did you EVER hear of mass deaths and people lying on the street without treatment because they had no insurance? NO!
This was a strawman argument.
I lost a job and was enrolled in a county program in Texas and got the best care I ever had—because I used it more often because it was FREE. Since I now have deductibles on my Medicare, I don’t run to the free clinic all the time when I have the flu.
Every county in the country has provisions for healthcare for the poor and those of marginal incomes. County Hospitals are taxpayer funded for indigent care and private hospitals are, by law, required to treat anyone who shows up at their door for emergency care before they can refer the patient to a county hospital.
With Obamacare, however, the hospitals, private and public alike see a new stream of income from patients who would previously be treated virtually for free. It helps their bottom line in both direct and indirect ways.
But all this bribery comes with a cost: Instead of using their ‘best care’ options, their delivery of healthcare will now be decided by non-medical bureaucrats interpreting the law as to who gets care and payments. We can now look forward to the Driver’s License Department lady looking to get a better job with more pay and more responsibility for determining your healthcare.
Essentially Obummercare IS what you suggest. All of us are paying for pre-existing conditions as part of a nationalization of healthcare. It may not be the optimal way to do it, but it is a way that leftists prefer.
“paying for full on Obummercare” isn’t clear enough for me to respond.
However, I think some provision will be made for pre-existing conditions with the taxpayers footing the bill—regardless of the fact that people with pre-existing conditions were always covered pre-Obamacare via programs existing in every county in the country for indigent or uninsured folks.
The problems that existed in the old system were for folks who worked and had sufficient income for the hospitals and doctors to look to them for eventual payment. They could run up bills that were unsupportable.
Grandfathering doesn’t necessarily have to do so with a deluxe palette of things. It could be done with a more sparing plate of benefits. The idea is to try not to kick someone off of coverage altogether.
Other safety net aid programs could and should be charity driven. The problem with being an old insurance co. veteran is that colors your views on everything. You lived to sell insurance plans.
I don’t have any incentive to hide the flaws in the old insurance system. There were plenty of bad policies flogged by unethical salemen to gullible buyers which I considered substandard in their purported coverage==and some companies spent more time on denying coverage because of undisclosed pre-existing conditions than paying out for coverage. Did you ever see the movie, “The Rainmaker” with Matt Damon?
I don’t know why you question my motives when I have some experience which you clearly do not.
It’s more like, when you have a hammer everything starts to look like a nail. No, Mr. Carpenter, I really do not need your work to make my dinner.
Obama will EO Obamacare and use the media to bully the GOP into compliance.
The precedent has been set this week.
The guy is King evidently, there is no process except his, unless both party’s in the Legislative branches wake up and see the two way street this opens up.
Then again, if Obama never leaves office (why should he) then all bets are off and the Left has their king and whitey pays the dues.
Damn ridiculous, somebody flame my ass.
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