Free Republic

Two Republican senators on Monday unveiled the outlines of an ObamaCare replacement plan that they hope would be able to attract some Democratic support. The plan, from Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), contains less drastic changes than some Republican proposals. It envisions keeping many of ObamaCare’s taxes in place in order to provide revenue for the replacement plan and gives states the choice of whether they want to keep ObamaCare. Under the plan, known as the Patient Freedom Act, state legislatures would have the choice of whether to keep ObamaCare operating in their states, complete with its...

More than a dozen states plan to cancel health care policies not in compliance with ObamaCare in the coming weeks, affecting thousands of people just before the midterm elections. "It looks like several hundred thousand people across the country will receive notices in the coming days and weeks," said Jim Capretta of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. The policies are being canceled because states that initially granted a reprieve at the request of President Obama are no longer willing to do so. In coming weeks, 13 states and the District of Columbia plan to cancel such policies, which generally...

Washington, DC—Representative James Lankford (R-OK), Chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee, today introduced the House Joint Resolution legislative proposal for the Health Care Compact, a breakthrough governance reform that allows states to clean up the health care mess created by the federal government. “The Health Care Compact is a way for states to protect their residents from the top-down, one-size-fits-all health care ‘solutions’ that have been imposed from Washington DC, including Obamacare,” said Lankford. “The compact transfers health care decision-making authority and responsibility from the federal level to member states. Those member states are then free to implement their...

Contrary to popular myth, states are under no obligation to expand Medicaid or create a health insurance exchange, and they should refuse to do either. That from Michael F. Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute. He argues that the costs to the private sector will be significant if states agree to create exchanges.