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Republican leaders propose Obamacare revisions

Cowards: The House Republican leadership today put forth a series of proposals for revisingnot repealing — Obamacare.

A packet distributed to lawmakers at the meeting and obtained by The Hill says the GOP bill will include tax credits, an expansion of health savings accounts, money for high risk pools to care for the sick and a major restructuring of Medicaid to cap federal payments.

No dollar figures for any of the Republican proposals have been presented yet. Lawmakers said that is because the Congressional Budget Office is still analyzing the plan.

Nowhere do these proposals deal with repealing Obamacare’s ban on low-cost catastrophic health insurance plans. In fact, these proposal do little to repeal any of Obamacare’s worst regulations, which make the entire concept of health insurance unsustainable. Instead, these proposals nibble at the edges of the law, and will only serve to make things worse. For example, the proposals will repeal all the taxes that pay for Obamacare’s costs, will eliminate the mandates that force people to buy insurance, but will do nothing to relieve insurance companies from the law’s requirements, such as forcing them to accept every applicant, no matter how sick. Such a crazy arrangement will guarantee that no one will buy health insurance until they need it, making it entirely unprofitable.

The whole mess is simply too complicated. The time has come to do what Alexander the Great did: rather than try to untie the Gordian knot, he simply took a sword and cut it. Congress should do the same to Obamacare. Only then will the health insurance industry have a chance of recovery.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


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"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

5 comments

  • wayne

    Mitch, Ryan, and Priebus, (among many, many others on “our side”) never intended to get rid of socialized medicine, they love big-government cronyism and will do or say anything to keep it.
    Do or say, anything.
    The only thing they care about, is control of the cookie jar, the rest of us be damned.
    (Just wait until they borrow a Trillion dollars for “shovel-ready infrastructure.”)

    I’m no longer a fan of Ann Coulter, but she’s absolutely correct in her latest column:
    The Silence of the Lambs Congress
    http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2017-02-15.html

  • Cotour

    Wayne, you and I both called it many weeks ago. The political class is loath to surrender any passed law, even Obamacare, no matter how un American it might be in order that they retain some level of control and power and also ensure their next election win.

    Trump must find his political weapons, suite up and prepare for battle. Eight years of battle.

  • ken anthony

    Ann’s column was a bull’s eye and clearly exposes the problem of government. Trump continues to do the one thing he does best, expose the liars and hypocrites.

    The American people voted to give all three branches to the republicans… something they seldom do. Now we find that voting still isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.

    It’s not just fake news. It’s fake leadership. Trump is the only thing real… so they all have to destroy him.

  • pzatchok

    Like I have said before.

    The US already had socialized medicine. The Medicaid/Medicare system and the VA.

    We could have just expanded the Medicaid system to cover the indigent and those with un-insurable preexisting conditions.

    Then after most people are covered again we can build off of the VA. use it as an example of government run care facilities.
    Then they can start opening government run health care facilities. We need more GP’s in inner city areas. These doctors and nurses would be government workers like military members. They would be paid exactly the same as military members of the same ‘rank’. For agreeing to take these lower paying jobs the government will pay off their student loans and pay for their malpractice insurance.

    They can drop all of Obama care and leave the private insurance companies alone.
    All the Obama care system did was funnel cash to private insurance companies thinking they could handle things better than some government agency. It could have worked before they put all the new rules on the private companies.

  • wayne

    ken-
    Good stuff in large measure. I rarely read Coulter anymore, but when she’s right, she’s right.

    –I would however, like to know why Reince Priebus is Chief of Staff.
    He engineered two loser presidential campaigns and somehow managed to keep his job. He’s a weasel, rino-crony, progressive, to his core.
    -And DeStefano, is head of Personnel; a Boehner acolyte, weasel, rino-crony, progressive, to his core.

    I do like a lot of what Trump has done and willing to give him a chance. But the rest of The Usual Suspects™ are up to no good, they can’t help themselves, and it’s business-as-usual for them.

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