Republican Obamacare plan signals that liberalism has already wonIn releasing their healthcare plan on Monday, House Republican leaders sent a signal loud and clear:
liberalism has already won.
Barring radical changes, Republicans will not be passing a bill that ushers in a new era of market-based healthcare. In reality,
the GOP will either be passing legislation that rests on the same philosophical premise as Obamacare, or will pass nothing at all, and thus keep Obamacare itself in place.
I've already shared my skepticism that the bill, which
doesn't actually start repealing the major spending provisions of Obamacare until the 2020 presidential election, would actually end up repealing much in practice. But for the sake of argument, let's just assume the plan gets implemented exactly as written.
Under GOPcare, individuals
would not be able to take insurance with them from job to job, because tax credits would not be available to people who have an offer of job-based insurance. They would
not be able to purchase whatever plan they want, because the federal government will still be dictating what has to be in insurance policies, making insurance more expensive then it needs to be. If this bill passes, everybody would have to get their insurance either through government, their employer via tax subsidy, or be left to purchase government-designed health policies using federal subsidies.
The argument is about whether the government should pay for it by forcing healthy people to purchase insurance under the threat of a penalty, as Obamacare does, or by threatening anybody who doesn't maintain continuous coverage with
a 30 percent late fee, as the GOP prefers.
Liberals, in other words, have won the central philosophical argument, and Republicans are reduced to fighting over the mechanics.http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/gop-obamacare-plan-signals-that-liberalism-has-already-won/article/2616636
