Look who’s talking about healthcare policy

For most of the umpteen 2016 Presidential primary debates, there was virtual silence on the subject of the Affordable Care Act. There were a few mentions on the Democratic side, but on the Republican side … crickets. This was particularly stunning given that “Obamacare” had spent nearly six years being the single most despised policy of President Obama by the Republican Party, so hated by the GOP that they voted to repeal it over 60 times. And yet, when it came time for the GOP debates … there was little mention of the law.

Look who’s talking about healthcare policy

Well that was then; this is now. Discussion of the ACA, and where to go next with healthcare policy in America, has heated up tremendously on the Democratic side of the aisle, as Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders slug it out over whether we should stay the course by improving and expanding the ACA to achieve universal coverage, or shift to comprehensive Single Payer healthcare for everyone.

Last night’s GOP Debate on CNN was a case study in ACA derp. To give you an idea, even the Closed Captioning service pretty much gave up trying partway through the event.In the most recent Republican debates, Obamacare has also finally returned to the front lines, but from a slightly different … or, shall we say, a slightly less factually accurate or utterly ungrounded in reality kind of way.

Of course, every one of the remaining candidates still says they want to repeal the ACA, but trying to decipher some of their logic or reasoning is, as always, a bit on the difficult side. Last night’s GOP Debate on CNN was a case study in ACA derp. To give you an idea, even the Closed Captioning service pretty much gave up trying partway through the event.

Anyway, all five remaining candidates shot their mouths off about the ACA and healthcare policy (or whatever passes for “policy” in Trump’s head). I’ve cut out a lot of the “unintelligible yelling” in the exchanges below:

Rubio on subsidies …

BLITZER: All of you want to repeal and replace Obamacare, so let’s talk about your plans, specific plans to replace it.

BASH: Senator Rubio, you said yesterday, right here in Houston, that Mr. Trump thinks part of Obamacare is pretty good. So, he says he is going to repeal Obamacare. Are you saying that you’re worried he won’t?

RUBIO: The individual mandate. He said he likes the individual mandate portion of it, which I don’t believe that should be part of it. That should not remain there. I think here’s what we need to replace it with.

We need to repeal Obamacare completely and replace it with a system that puts Americans in charge of their health care money again. If your employer wants to buy health insurance for you, they can continue to do so from any company in America they want to buy it from. Otherwise, your employers can provide you health care money, tax-free, not treated as income, and you can use that money only for health care, but you can use it to fund health care any way you want, fully fund a health savings account, the combination of a health savings account or a private plan from any company in any state in the country.

And if you don’t have that, then you will have a refundable tax credit that provides you health care money to buy your own health care coverage. And that, I think, is a much better approach than Obamacare, which, by the way, isn’t just bad for health care, it’s bad for our economy. It is a health care law that is basically forcing companies to lay people off, cut people’s hours, move people to part-time. It is not just a bad health care law, it is a job-killing law.

Where to begin? Well, for one thing, Rubio is basically keeping the “tax credits” part of the ACA (which obviously do cost the federal government billions of dollars) … but would apparently get rid of all of the regulatory parts, which presumably means allowing insurance carriers to charge whatever the hell they want, to only cover whomever they wish and whatever types of healthcare services they want to and to kick people off their policies over minor technicalities on a whim.

… the individual mandate

Furthermore, according to none other than Michael Cannon, who is the chief anti-Obamacare guy (he was the architect of the infamous King v. Burwell case which nearly crippled the law last summer), Rubio’s plan would actually effectively keep the individual mandate after all, in the form of a financial hostage (basically, buy insurance and you get the money; don’t and we shoot your tax credit in the head).

… and ACA, the Great Job Killer

As for the ACA being “bad for the economy” and being a “job killer,” this is, of course, utter nonsense; as Dan Diamond noted over at Forbes last summer:

It’s important to note: The overall economy has been marching upwards since March 2010 … coincidentally, the month that the Affordable Care Act was signed into law. The private sector has gained 12.3 million jobs since the depths of the recession.

That rising tide has lifted all boats, including health care.

Since then, of course, the numbers are even more impressive; up nearly 14 million jobs as of the end of 2015.

Trump on the individual mandate …

BASH: Mr. Trump, Senator Rubio just said that you support the individual mandate. Would you respond?

TRUMP: I just want to say, I agree with that 100 percent, except pre-existing conditions, I would absolutely get rid of Obamacare. We’re going to have something much better, but pre-existing conditions, when I’m referring to that, and I was referring to that very strongly on the show with Anderson Cooper, I want to keep pre-existing conditions.

Just a note: I presume that Trump means that he wants to continue requiring insurance carriers to cover people with pre-existing conditions. At least I hope so.

Source link : [www.healthinsurance.org]

Tweet