OPINION:
Paul Ryan’s House Republican Task Force on health policy reform released on Wednesday the Republican majority’s unified plan to repeal and replace Obamacare. Republicans should not be shy about making this reform the centerpiece of this year’s election. This “Patient Power, Consumer Choice and Competition” plan will be embraced by the public as far preferable to Obamacare.
The so-called Affordable Care Act will be confirmed as the fraud that it is, forcing consumers to pay much more for much less in government-controlled health insurance protection that President Obama likes and has imposed on America. And American workers will be emancipated from the part-time job catastrophe that employers have adopted to protect themselves from Obamacare’s employer mandate costs.
Under the Republican majority plan, workers and their families will finally be liberated to choose and keep the health insurance plan they like, rather than be coerced to pay for the health plan the president has chosen for them under the Obamacare mandates. Both the employer and individual Obamacare mandates would be abolished by the House Republican majority reforms.
Under the Republican reforms, everyone without employer-provided health insurance would receive the Universal Health Insurance Tax Credit, which workers and their families could use to help pay for the health insurance they choose in the competitive marketplace. That credit effectively extends the tax preference for employer-provided health insurance to everyone on equal terms.
The poor would be liberated by long-overdue reform of Medicaid, which would be returned to the control of 50 competing and experimenting states, similar to the 1996 Reagan federalist “block grant” model. The vital theme of “Patient Power, Consumer Choice and Competition” would be extended to the poor, as Mr. Ryan’s briefers confirmed to us.
States would be free to choose to provide Medicaid benefits through health insurance premium assistance. The poor could use that assistance, in addition to the Universal Health Insurance Tax Credit, to help pay for the health insurance they each choose, including Health Savings Accounts. States would be free as well to adopt work requirements for the able-bodied capable of work.
That same theme would be extended to seniors through Mr. Ryan’s favored Medicare reforms, which just provide for extending the consumer choice and cost-saving Medicare Parts C and D to the old-fashioned, costly, Medicare Parts A and B. Under Medicare C and D, seniors each choose the private insurance they like and prefer for their Medicare benefits. Medicare Parts A and B follow the outdated, Obama model of government control, taxation and redistribution. Market competition and consumer choice incentives for cost control would be far superior for seniors than Obamacare’s $800 billion in Medicare cuts.
Health insurers would be liberated to sell across state lines, creating a nationwide competitive market. Those uninsured with pre-existing conditions would be assured of coverage by extending the continuous coverage protections, proven workable in the employer health insurance market, to the individual market. They would also be included in state-run uninsurable risk pools, which would be a coverage backstop for everyone. Booming, highly popular, Health Savings Accounts would be modernized, broadened and liberated to maximize consumer choice and control for everyone in America who prefers them.
Finally, under the House Republican majority plan, Obamacare would be repealed in its entirety, including its trillions in taxes, costly federal regulations, and unnecessary government spending. That would provide a 16 percent reduction in the capital gains tax and the tax on corporate dividends, and nearly a 25 percent reduction in the Medicare top payroll tax rate. It would eliminate the employer mandate’s effective tax on jobs, and the individual mandate’s effective tax increase on the middle class and working people, contrary to Mr. Obama’s promises never to increase such taxes. All of this would be enormously pro-growth, which is why it should be a centerpiece of Donald Trump’s economic growth plan.
By liberating economic growth, consumer choice and cost-saving incentives and competition, the House Republican majority plan would assure health insurance coverage to millions more Americans, far more than Obamacare, which the Congressional Budget Office concluded would fall 30 million short of universal coverage, 10 years after full implementation.
• Lewis K. Uhler is founder and chairman of the National Tax Limitation Committee and National Tax Limitation Foundation. Peter J. Ferrara is a senior policy adviser at the foundation and a senior fellow for budget policy and entitlement reform for the Heartland Institute.
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