Repeal and Replace: A Sick Joke

In other words, if R&R were to succeed, many American families would be hurt. These proposals, which proponents ludicrously call reforms, would promote the individual health insurance market, depriving Americans of the cost efficiencies of group coverage; eliminate public health insurance for all but the poorest Americans; and by placing more emphasis on the individual market, ultimately cause individuals and families to pay more for health care.

Even if these proposals were to allow more Americans to buy coverage than they can afford now, that would still be far fewer than PPACA’s promise to cover 31 million Americans now without health insurance. More likely, R&R would cause even more Americans to do without coverage.

Just think for a moment about the R&R proposal to allow insurers to offer coverage outside their licensing state. Far from giving consumers greater choice, this disgraceful plan would enable insurers to seek out approval from states offering the least consumer protections. Companies could even offer plans through the Northern Marianas, for crying out loud, a U.S. territory that has no regulatory watchdog responsible for insurance. We would then likely see an unseemly race to the bottom among states as they reduce consumer safeguards to attract more health insurer money.

The R&R bunch also proposes providing high-risk plans so that people with pre-existing conditions can get coverage. But this would cover far fewer conditions than would be mandated by PPACA, with its outright ban on eliminating pre-existing conditions. So these so-called reforms would leave many people without gravely needed coverage.

At best, R&R would only make health coverage less costly for people who already have it. Moreover, there’s no guarantee even that benefit would be seen. Unlike PPACA, these proposals offer no measures aimed at reducing the cost of care. Yes, there is a plan proposed by some advocates of this “reform” to cut down on faked diagnoses and other fraud. No one, however, knows how much fraud there is, or how much of it can be stopped. That does not appear to stop R&R advocates from advancing the foolish notion that such crackdowns are a significant cost-saving idea.

Tossing health care reform also means getting rid of new safeguards under PPACA, such as provisions that would make it easy for consumers to compare health plans, give them the right to appeal claim denials and to receive a standard menu of benefits that all plans would have to cover.

There are ways to improve on PPACA, but eliminating it altogether is not one of them. How can R&R advocates possibly say Americans would be better off without PPACA? They might as well say they would be better off without health care itself–which would very likely be the case for many if they have their way with their fake reforms.