Conservatives in the House of Representatives are unveiling legislation they plan to push to replace Obamacare and provide real health care affordability and access to the American people.
The plan is titled “The American Health Care Reform Act,” and is the work of the Republican Study Committee (RSC), the 188-member coalition of House conservatives.
“The big problems before Obamacare were that is cost too much and access was limited. Yet, since Obamacare, those problems are even worse. Costs are much higher and access is even more limited, ” said RSC Chairman Steve Scalise of Louisiana. He says the additional problems created by Obamacare, including doctors leaving the profession and Americans losing health plans they like, make it impossible to fix the new laws.
“We actually begin by repealing Obamacare because we do think you need a clean slate if we’re actually going to go and fix problems and then we work on things that get a competitive marketplace, which doesn’t exist today,” he said.
The RSC reform plan starts with removing the barriers to purchasing health insurance across state lines. It also allows for association health plans, so small businesses can pool together in order to receive better rates often reserved for larger firms. Individuals could also band together to find better rates.
Tax reform is also a major aspect of the bill, providing assistance for individuals to shop broadly for their coverage. Scalise says that option could save a lot of people a lot of money.
“One of the problems right now with buying your own health care, if you find a health plan that’s better than your employer’s care, your employer is able to deduct the cost of health care. But you as an individual can’t deduct that same plan if you buy it on your own. It makes health care much more expensive if you go outside your traditional employer model,” said Scalise. “So by equalizing that and allowing individuals to have the same ability to deduct health care that companies enjoy, you actually lower costs and can give families more options than they have today.”
Other features include medical malpractice reform, expansion of Health Savings Accounts, provisions to help patients with pre-existing conditions and an end to taxpayer dollars being used to pay for abortions.
So why are House conservatives bringing forth this plan now as opposed to championing it during the original debate or more than three months before most of Obamacare kicks in?
Scalise says many of these ideas were promoted during the debate in 2009-2010 but Democrats had the numbers to pass their version. Since then, he says Republicans have focused on repeal of Obamacare as well as individual parts of the plan. By the time 2012 came around, the party essentially waited to see if Mitt Romney would defeat President Obama and take the lead on changing the health care laws.
The other news on the Obamacare front Wednesday was House Speaker John Boehner’s decision to allow a House vote on a continuing resolution to fund the government past the end of the month at existing rates while completely defunding the new health care law. Scalise welcomed the news enthusiastically.
“I’m glad that the Speaker is bringing a bill that a lot of us in RSC pushed for, that we wanted to tie defund and delay or Obamacare to the CR. This is something we’ve been asking for for weeks. Our leadership listened and has responded to the members in the House,” said Scalise.
“It shows that we want to fund government. We want to fund the essential running of government, but we also believe that the president’s health care law would be bad for our country,” he said.
Democrats say Republicans are willing to shut down the government over their fixation on Obamacare. Republicans say any government shutdown would be a result of the Democrats’ insistence on defending a failing program. Scalise says the GOP should have the upper hand in the debate because it actually has a bill to fund the government and Democrats do not.
