Obamacare’s late enrollment surge led numerous conservative experts to conclude that the law won’t collapse on its own and that full repeal was no longer viable.
Now House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), in many ways the face of the Obamacare repeal movement, is casting doubt on the idea that the transformative law can be fully undone — at least without a plan to replace it.
“(To) repeal Obamacare … isn’t the answer. The answer is repeal and replace,” Boehner told constituents at the Middletown Rotary Club, as reported by the Cincinnati Enquirer. “The challenge is that Obamacare is the law of the land. It is there and it has driven all types of changes in our health care delivery system. You can’t recreate an insurance market overnight.”
Boehner has sanctioned more than 50 House votes to repeal or dismantle Obamacare. But, notably, the Republican-led House has never passed a comprehensive replacement for the law. GOP leaders say they’re working on an alternative, but the party is far from a consensus on how to reform health care.
Boehner emphasized that Obamacare is transforming the health care system, and cautioned that some of its impacts may be permanent: “Secondly, you’ve got the big hospital organizations buying up doctor’s groups because hospitals get reimbursed two or three times doctor’s do for the same procedure just because it’s a hospital. Those kinds of changes can’t be redone.”
The Ohio Republican said he remains optimistic about making a “transition” to what he calls a “patient-centered” health care system, although he didn’t explain how he’d do it.
“So the biggest challenge we are going to have is — I do think at some point we’ll get there — is the transition of Obamacare back to a system that empowers patients and doctors to make choices that are good for their own health,” he said, “as opposed to doing what the government is dictating they should do.”
Blah, blah, blah. Enough already with the meaningless word salad about “empowering patients to make choices that are good for their own health… without government dictating what they should do.” If you asked him to parse his own words and explain what that actually means in specific terms I strongly doubt he could do it. So, John, until you have a fully formed plan to show us, why don’t you just STFU and move on.
… except when the doctors and patients are women discussing women’s health issues, then the government should absolutely be dictating what they should do.
“…as opposed to doing what the government is dictating they should do.”
The perennial tripping point for conservatives.
They want to swap government dictatorship for insurance dictatorship, and it isn’t any better. In fact, it’s worse, because it’s in the interest of insurance companies to dictate what is NOT best for the consumer.
The reason they haven’t come out with a replacement plan is they can’t come up with one that doesn’t look like Obamacare.
The GOP can’t shave in the morning without a swig off the obstruction bottle–they will wave hands, talk a bluster and hold votes, but you only need to look at their record to know they have done absolutely nothing for the American People. The GOP is a wholly-owned corporate lobby group, nothing more.