Sunday, February 5, 2017

Replace ObamaCare, Don’t Rename It

Trying to cure all the program’s ills will only make them worse—and the GOP will get the blame.
So powerful is the political appeal of entitlement programs that modern democracies routinely choose bankruptcy over curtailing them. That’s even true of ObamaCare. Despite surging premiums, lagging enrollment, the growing burden on the economy, and the enduring opposition of most voters, the debate is about replacing rather than simply repealing it.
If the objective were simply to prove why something as important as health insurance should never be turned over to the government, lawmakers would simply pass a health-care freedom amendment allowing people to buy insurance outside ObamaCare, as they were originally promised, and let the program die of its own weight. But since Republicans have promised to protect Americans from the consequences of ObamaCare’s failure, what might have been a valuable learning experience is not a viable option.
ObamaCare subsidized small employers to provide health insurance, funded massive subsidies on the health exchanges, and imposed increasing penalties on the uninsured who did not buy insurance on the exchanges—spending $67 billion to subsidize the purchase of private insurance in 2016 alone. From its adoption in 2010 through 2016, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control, the number of Americans with private health insurance has risen by 14.6 million, or 8.9%.
That’s not as impressive as it sounds. Even though HillaryCare was defeated, the number of Americans with private insurance rose 7.5% between 1992 and 1998, through wage and job growth alone. Applied to the 2016 population, the growth-induced increase in the percentage of Americans who obtained private health insurance during the comparable stages of the Clinton recovery would have been 12.3 million. To put it another way, compared with what a strong recovery would have been expected to produce without new subsidies, ObamaCare added only 2.3 million people to the private insurance rolls at a cost of $29,130 each.
Read the rest from Phil Gramm HERE and follow links to related stories below:

The Republicans Have a Secret Plan to Replace Paul Ryan and They’re Acting on It

Cassidy-Collins plan is a poor excuse for Obamacare replacement

If you like what you see, please "Like" us on Facebook either here or here. Please follow us on Twitter here.


No comments: