Replace Obamacare with a System That Cuts Costs and Values Quality Care

Judging by appointments to top posts in health care, the incoming Trump administration is on course to validate its campaign promise to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act. Despite the emphasis by many on preserving secondary parts of the law like maintaining children up to age 26 on the parent’s coverage, Americans should understand that the ACA indeed must be eliminated. Why? Because its misguided amalgam of regulations generated skyrocketing insurance premiums, reduced choice of doctors, funneled millions more poor people into substandard programs and accelerated consolidation throughout the health care industry– serious consequences directly harmful to patients.

The ACA’s biggest error was broadening a detrimental misapplication of health insurance that began decades ago. The point of insurance is to reduce risk of financial disaster. Instead, with its long list of mandates and regulations, the ACA furthered the inappropriate construct that insurance should subsidize all medical care and minimize out-of-pocket payments. The ACA’s coverage requirements directly caused more widespread adoption of bloated insurance. When combined with invisible health care prices as well as doctor qualifications, most patients have virtually no incentive and lack sufficient information to consider value; similarly, providers don’t need to compete on price. The consequences are the overuse of health care and unrestrained costs. Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), tax-sheltered accounts for smaller health expenses, are a critical component of reform, because they motivate direct consideration of price. Better than simple tax deductions, HSAs also incentivize saving.

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December 29th, 2016
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Incoming Congress Immediately Will Pick up Obamacare Repeal

When the 115th Congress convenes in early January, they’ll waste no time before launching an assault on key parts of President Barack Obama’s signature health care reform law. A bare-bones budget resolution acting as a vehicle to dismantle the Affordable Care Act will get a House floor vote the week of Jan. 9, according to a memo from Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR), the incoming chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, CQ Roll Call reported. That means the Senate could take up and pass the budget resolution during the prior week.

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December 29th, 2016
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Repeal? Replace? A Q&A with Jim Capretta on the Future of Obamacare

James, C. Capretta, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and health care policy scholar, answers questions about why Obamacare isn’t working and how those on left and the right aim to alter the health care law. Capretta says, “[Republicans want to] retain the employer-based health insurance system and change the structure of the regulations involving the non-group market that’s now covered by the ACA. They’d have subsidies, tax credits for people outside the employer system to make sure everybody in the United States could get health insurance if they wanted it. This mirrors a proposal that was introduced a couple of years ago by Senator Hatch, Senator Burr, and Congressman Fred Upton. That plan looks a lot like a House’s “Better Way” health care plan. I would say that the leading contender for what would be a replace is somewhere in the universe of those two types of plans.”

December 29th, 2016
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