Some have claimed the Republicans talk about replacing Obamcare, but don't have a plan. Not true. This is from liberal NPR, by the way, and is a report on their latest plan......and as NPR says.....may be their very best one. I like the fact it's written, in part, by a physician...Sen. Tom Coburn.....and two other Senators who have worked most of their legislative careers on health policy. Now that they are finally in the Majority, I feel we'll be seeing this one yet again. Especially, after finding out through Jonathan Gruber that we were defrauded during the passage of Obamacare. "Republicans have offered a wide array of proposals to "repeal and replace" the Affordable Care Act since it became law in 2010. But few have come with the pedigree of the plan just unveiled by a trio of senior Senate Republicans. The Patient Choice, Affordability, Responsibility and Empowerment Act, or CARE for short, is a proposal being floated by Sens. Richard Burr, R-N.C., Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Tom Coburn, R-Okla. Hatch is the senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee; Burr is on the health subcommittee of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee; Coburn is a physician. All three have spent much or all of their legislative careers working on health policy. "Obamacare just isn't working," Hatch said on the Senate floor Monday afternoon. "Try as he might during tomorrow night's State of the Union address, President Obama will not be able to convince the American people that his health care law is anything other than an unmitigated disaster." At a briefing for health reporters, aides to the senators said the goal of their proposal is to focus on bringing down costs. Hence the plan would repeal the ACA's requirements that most people have insurance, as well as requirements that insurers offer minimum benefits and employers offer insurance or face potential fines. The Republican proposal also would eliminate most of the taxes and fees that the law imposes to pay for the generous tax credits offered to help people pay for the required insurance. And the plan would repeal the requirement that insurers cover people with pre-existing health conditions, although people who remain "continuously covered" for at least 18 months could not be denied or charged more. And while the plan would keep the ACA's ban on insurers' imposing a lifetime limit on insurance benefits, annual limits could return. The GOP plan offers its own set of tax credits to help those with lower incomes afford coverage, and like those in the ACA, they would be adjusted for age but not for geography. That means the tax credit would be the same across the nation, even though insurance costs differ widely in different parts of the country. The tax credits also would be available to those earning up to three times the federal poverty line, or $34,470 in 2013. That's less than in the ACA, which provides help for those earning up to four times the poverty level, or $45,960. The GOP plan also would let insurers charge older people more than the ACA does, which could lower premiums for younger people. The ACA limits premium differences for older people to three times more than those for young people; the GOP proposal would allow premiums for older people to be as much as five times higher, although states could opt for different "age rating," staffers said. The proposal would leave the Medicare provisions of the health law untouched ("this is not about Medicare," said one of the aides). But it would dramatically remake the Medicaid program, which is undergoing a big expansion as a result of the ACA. It all seemed so easy then. Back in June, the Supreme Court declared the Affordable Care Act constitutional. Waiting for that decision may have cost the administration precious time. The GOP plan would end the expansion of Medicaid to include all people below a certain income level. It would cap Medicaid's currently unlimited funding, except for the elderly and disabled. States would instead get payments based on the number of low-income families and children, described by staffers as the program's "traditional populations." But there apparently would be no plan to continue insurance for people who are currently signing up for Medicaid in the half of states now expanding the program. Instead, those people would be offered tax credits. And while the aides insisted that the overall plan is intended to create less disruption for people insured through their jobs, the GOP plan would be financed via a highly controversial mechanism: capping the so-called employer health insurance exclusion at 65 percent. That means that for the average worker, 35 percent of the health insurance benefits that are currently tax-free would instead be considered taxable income. Economists across the political spectrum have recommended such a change as a way to curb the growing generosity of employer-provided health benefits. But the first small step toward that, a so-called Cadillac tax in the ACA, has proved so radioactive that most people doubt it will ever take effect as scheduled in 2018." http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/201...blicans-offer-their-plan-to-replace-obamacare
This plan has been kicking around since Jan. Quite the step back from the ACA, and mostly to the benefit the of insurance companies. Standard non-geographic tax credits in lieu of premium subsidies, pre-existing condition exclusion, return of catastrophic insurance plans, a different kind of "Cadillac tax", age based premium tiers, and all kinds of other stuff. for sure an improvement over the dog's breakfast prior to the ACA, but the advantages of this plan over the existing ACA are hardly compelling to the individual, but sure as hell are attractive to insurance companies. Here's a couple of critiques of the proposal. http://www.aei.org/publication/why-the-patient-care-act-proposal-isnt-ready-to-replace-obamacare/ http://www.care2.com/causes/4-ways-the-gop-alternative-to-obamacare-is-just-a-giant-step-backward.html
It's too bad you can't get that wonderful Repub plan and experience it for yourself over the next 30 years to give us firsthand evidence of how good it is.
I don't see it as a giant step backwards. I see it as more reasonable....and without the total gov't control.
What an intelligent, well reasoned response. No wonder you liberal types are rising in popularity in America.
Forget that. We need to go to the single payer system and eliminate all of the insurance companies and their control over healthcare decisions.
Just skimming through the OP, it looks like nothing so much as a "back to the future" plan which is the point some years ago we started looking for something better for the majority of people in this country and came up with the ACA. I'd also say that if Congressional Republicans would spend just a little bit of time putting some oil on the ACA's machinery instead of throwing in sand and rocks, it would work lot better.
This is a year old. One might wonder why the GOP House never actually took it up. which tells you all you need to know about how serious they really are. First of all, they know that they can't repeal the individual mandate. That's the part they like to attack publically, but they also know that thier clients in the insurance industry will never tolerate it. Second, this plan brings back pre existing conditions, and set up a loophole for insurers to drive through to preserve them. And, this plan would raise taxes on all working people. But since this wasn't a serious proposal, and the GOP spin machine is in the spin dry mode trying to list ever half assed idea any GOP politician ever floated at a dinner speech as a comprehensive alternative to Obamacare, there's little reason to pay attention to this latest attempt to spin the reality.
Sure. And it's easy for those who create their own reality, then have it reinforced by their compliant news sources. And you should be ashamed of yourself for disturbing them.
The proposal would leave the Medicare provisions of the health law untouched ("this is not about Medicare," said one of the aides Lol so it would keep the death panels and the 700 billion Medicare "cuts" the GOP spent 5 years crying about???
So,why hasn't this been proposed and passed in the Republican controlled House of Representatives? Guess it is just another pretend Republican plan.
While it is a start I do not like the proposals and find some of it unfair to many Americans and will not resolve the main issue of people simply not being able to afford the high premiums many cannot afford. Keep working on it, if this is the best they can come up with we are stuck with ACA.
Someone please explain to me how tax credits as proposed in the plan will help low income people who don't pay federal income taxes now.
That isnt a plan lol it actually just a repeal with an 18 month coverage. Republicans can go to hell.
If this is a bill that passed the House it will have a number. Since you said it has actually passed the House how about giving us the number of the bill.
