On Tuesday night, HELP Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-TN) delivered the most detailed plan yet we’ve heard from a Republican since the election on how to repeal and replace Obamacare.
Alexander’s points were clear. He didn’t want to repeal Obamacare until a new plan was in place, he wanted to ensure that Republicans didn’t just replace Obamacare with a 2,000-page-bill, but slowly, and he wanted to give states the ability to set their own standards on Medicaid and what counts as health insurance. He urged the federal government to keep giving subsidies to insurers to cover low income people. You can read more about what it does here.
But Alexander’s extensive plan prompted the question, how many Republicans are with him? On Wednesday night, Alexander gave us an answer.
“I am doing what I think the chairman of the HELP Committee ought to do in the middle of a debate about repealing and replacing Obamacare,” Alexander said. “Obviously, I wouldn’t be making these suggestions if I didn’t think they had a good chance of representing the view of enough Republicans to help us get to 51 votes, but we’re still working on it.”
Alexander said Republicans are still having to figure out the best way to work with President-elect Trump and the House, but he wanted to make sure that he was on the record supporting something.
“We’re coming to more of a consensus, and if I had to sum it up I’d say we want to speed up the replacement. More and more Republicans are saying, ‘We want to see more of the replacement before we vote for repeal, number one, and number 2 we want to deal with it – as Senator McConnell said– in manageable chunks,'” Alexander said. “Medicare is one chunk, the individual market is one chunk, which needs a rescue plan, and if we think about it that way, we can pretty quickly get to thinking about how we can begin to repair the damage Obamacare’s done.”
Alexander’s plan revolves around moving health care decisions “from Washington back to the states.”
“We want to make sure we do it right and the American people deserve, not just a quick fix, but a real long-term solution,” Alexander said.
Alexander’s overarching point is that Republicans are not going to “repeal anything effectively until there is a concrete, practical alternative in place for Americans to choose.”
That is a huge shift from what Republicans were saying before the holiday. Alexander has been warning his colleagues for a long time about repealing Obamacare too quickly. It seems like they are starting to listen.
" he wanted to give states the ability to set their own standards on Medicaid and what counts as health insurance."
Great, so the governor of Mississippi will decide what is proper health insurance? Expect a lot of southern corpses on the horizon.
I am sure Greg Abbott, who is readying himself to run for the Precidentsy in 2020, already has a plan for Texas. It will be called the Texas Miracle Plan. The only problem is the wall along the border with Mexico, since the plan will rely on the ability of poor people to cross the river to get the care that is either unaffordable or unavailable in the state, especially for women’s bodies.
The ACA actually gives states a lot of latitude in running their programs, and they can apply to the feds to do new things (like single payer) if they want. The limitation is that it doesn’t allow the states to see crappy, useless plans as insurance and enforces minimum medical care standards. Republicans hate that, they would rather people be able to buy useless policies that fail them in the end (but make insurance companies money in the process), and they didn’t want to give poor people insurance through Medicaid, so they let the feds run their state exchanges and refused free Medicaid funding.
It looks like their replacement “plan” is going to end up as the ACA minus the standards, with lower Medicaid subsidies, and more chances for people to be cheated by the medical system, if the state allows it. They will stamp Trumpcare on it, the red states will finally do what they should have done before, and the blue state insurance systems basically won’t be changed while the red states can claim their insurance systems have improved when they really haven’t. I would hope people wouldn’t be fooled by these shenanigans but odds are they will think it’s the greatest thing ever without realizing it’s Obamacare but worse.
Make America sick again!
You can bet the house: the Republicans will never live under the healthcare plan they shove up America’s ass! They are so special from tax payers who cover their wars and deficits.
Somebody please explain: Does someone who has been diagnosed with Cancer or Diabetes or a Brain Tumor need to get different treatment to be cured if they live in Mississippi rather than if they live in New York or California? This is absolutely the stupidest concept I have ever seen. “States rights” is going to determine what kind of health care people receive? Starts to sound like the rebirth of the “Death Panels” to me.