First, a programming alert: I will be on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal tomorrow (Saturday) morning starting at 8:45 a.m. EDT to talk about the Affordable Care Act and the Trump Administration’s achievements on health care.
In a nice coincidence of timing, I had a commentary published today at The Hill on Health Care Reform that Works.
I explained that GOP candidates across the country are getting pummeled with ads by challengers frightening millions of Americans into believing they will lose their health care and pre-existing condition protections if the ACA is struck down, as MANY Democratic senators claimed during this week’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Judge Amy Coney Barrett nomination to the Supreme Court.
There is, I believe, little or no chance the court will so significantly reverse course and declare the entire act unconstitutional because the individual mandate no longer contains a tax penalty. Every Republican in Congress has pledged to protect pre-existing conditions, but they need to show that conservatives have a plan to protect the vulnerable.
And that is where our Health Care Choices 2020 proposal comes in. Our approach would dedicate resources to provide extra help for those with pre-ex and greater health needs. (Obamacare threw these patients into the same insurance pool with everyone else, causing premiums to soar, the quality of coverage to decline, and driving millions of healthy people and families out of the individual market.)
We can do better. The centerpiece of the Health Care Choices proposal would devolve power and control away from Washington by replacing ObamaCare’s entitlements with formula grants to states. Our proposal would devote a portion of the grant to provide extra support for people with pre-existing conditions without all the collateral damage inflicted by ObamaCare.
The grants would give states more flexibility – with guidelines – and free up resources to allow them to decide how best to make health insurance affordable and available regardless of income or medical condition.
We will be releasing the full plan early next week, with a lot more detail on the summary we released last month. Stay tuned!
