Republicans are eager to repeal Obamacare but they’ve also promised to replace it with something that doesn’t leave 20 million Americans stranded without health insurance. And they have no idea what the replacement will be. That's because they face 3 big problems:
1. Republicans say they want a “market-based” system. But Obamacare is already market based – relying on private, for profit health insurers. That’s the first problem. Anthem, Aetna, Humana, Cigna, and United Health are already so big they can get the deals they want from the government by threatening to drop out of the insurance exchanges (several already have). And even now they’re trying to merge into far bigger behemoths that will be able to extort even better terms.
2. Every part of Obamacare depends on every other part. Trump says he’d like to continue to bar insurers from denying coverage to individuals with preexisting conditions. But that popular provision depends on healthy people being required to pay into the insurance pool, a mandate that Republicans vow to eliminate.
3. Revoking the tax increases in the Affordable Care Act would make it impossible to finance subsidies for lower-income and elderly Americans. The two biggest of these taxes -- a 3.8-percentage-point surtax on dividends, interest and other unearned income; and a 0.9-percentage-point increase in the payroll tax that helps fund Medicare -- are also the most progressive, applying only to individuals earning more than $200,000 per year. Eliminating the payroll tax increase immediately pushes Medicare’s hospital fund back toward the insolvency that was looming before Obamacare became law. And repealing the surtax blatantly sacrifices insurance coverage for lower-income Americans in order to cut taxes for the rich.
The only practical answer is Medicare for all – a single payer -- but Republicans would never go for it. So they’ll have to come up with a replacement that’s even more complicated than Obamacare and that either shafts the poor and working class, or gives away the store.
What do you think?
Source
https://www.facebook.com/RBReich/?hc_ref=NEWSFEED&fref=nf
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