Republicans in the House, led by establishment crony Paul Ryan, have recently released their plan to “repeal and replace” President Obama’s signature piece of legislation (“Obamacare“). This “new” plan does very little in the way of dismantling that disastrously expensive, inefficient, and nonsensical utopian hodgepodge; essentially just rearranging and marginally altering a few of it’s provisions in an effort to appease angry (but mostly lethargic) Republican voters. Conservative senators like Dr. Rand Paul, Mike Lee, and Ted Cruz have already pledged to oppose this bill in the Senate; effectively nullifying any chance it has of actually making it to the president’s desk. Here are a few reasons why:
UNCONSTITUTIONAL MANDATE – While the new bill does remove the explicit mandate imposed by the original “Affordable Care Act (ACA),” it contains a provision that will effectively fine you an additional 30% if you drop insurance coverage for more than two months and then purchase new insurance later in a 12 month period. So, if you don’t buy insurance “today,” the government will impose a fine on you “tomorrow.” This is essentially the same idea utilized in the existing law, only with slightly altered language and penalty mechanisms. It also maintains the incredibly fallacious understanding of the constitutional role of government embraced by the Democrats to enact this terrible law in the first place.
PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS – One of the demonstrably harmful consequences of the ACA has been the consistently large increases in premiums year to year since its inception; resulting not only in greater out-of-pocket costs monthly, but also a drastic decline in plan quality (meaning more money owed later as well). This is largely a result of the ACA’s mandate that insurance companies cannot turn away potential customers based on pre-existing conditions. This is simply an insane premise on its face. Insurance is meant to guard against unforeseen future calamity. No insurance company would be expected to sell someone fire insurance while their house was already on fire; but that is exactly what the Democrats have forced them to do using the coercive power of government in this law. Many insurance companies have gone under thanks to this provision, and the bulk of the field is now being tilled by the American people who are chained to the plow of Obamacare whether they like it or not. The new Paul Ryan law keeps this provision.
MEDICAID EXPANSION – The real goal of Obamacare was never to lower the cost of privately provided health insurance. Any thoughtful person can see that the bill was specifically engineered to do two things: increase the cost of healthcare to unsustainable levels for private companies (funneling people into Medicaid) and ultimately set up the necessary and sufficient conditions for a single payer system. This bill sustains the current expansion of Medicaid, virtually insuring that it becomes a permanent entitlement fixture in the the US.
House Republican leadership has put forward an essentially spineless effort in this bill. They seem to be more afraid of disturbing the tubthumping chorus of angry liberals than they are concerned about doing what is fiscally and ethically responsible in dismantling this utopianist train-wreck of a law; one that is causing real damage to American families, the American taxpayer, and to American liberty in general. Let’s hope that president Trump will have the wisdom and foresight to lend his support to Paul, Cruz, and Lee. Maybe together they can pressure Paul Ryan’s House to come up with a solution that is both fiscally and ethically tenable while upholding and defending our essential liberty (freedom of choice & freedom from slavery).
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