Although it’s said that victory has hundreds of fathers and defeat is an orphan, the temporarily triumphant Trump White House might need to engage more effective “adoption” counselors. If and when a Senate bill to repeal and replace the ACA passes, it’s highly likely to differ from the House measure and require working out a shaky compromise in conference committee. If Republicans finally succeed in snatching legislative victory from the still-ominous jaws of defeat, then their next challenge of implementing new law and policy for health care could remind them of the “Winner’s Curse” in such endeavors.
. . .
With the House’s passage of the American Health Care Act, House Republican leaders have handed their Senate counterparts the biggest legislative weapon they have held in their entire careers. At this point, Senate Republicans should learn from a bit of wisdom often attributed to one of the wittiest and most clear-eyed Founders, Ben Franklin: “We must, indeed, all hang together,” he supposedly told the Continental Congress in 1776, “or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.” If the 52 GOP senators agree to stay together and maneuver through the next month together, they could bring about a huge breakthrough for the country and a rejection of the gridlock that has consumed the Senate for years.
. . .
In the United States, the difference between being in poverty and out of poverty is a job. The nation’s public assistance programs successfully alleviate suffering among low-income households, but they fail to raise self-sufficiency because they do not connect able-bodied people to work. Going forward, policymakers must incorporate work requirements throughout the safety net, which are proven to enhance programs like TANF and the EITC. Medicaid is an ideal candidate for work requirements, as it would encourage over 1 million people to find work without greatly disrupting the program itself.
. . .
Years of promising to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act took a major step last week with the House passing the American Health Care Act. The years of rancorous debate leading to this vote have highlighted the profound divisions in our political system. But, it has also obscured the encouraging reality that most Democrats and Republicans actually share a common goal – the creation of a high quality, high-performance, high-value health care system. We cannot continue to spend more than $3 trillion a year on health care, yet lag behind much of the developed world in overall health outcomes.
. . .