But the core planks of the Senate Republicans’ health bill — the Better Care Reconciliation Act — borrow just as much from Democratic ideas as Obamacare borrowed from Republican ones.
The Senate bill’s plan to reform Medicaid by tying per-enrollee spending to medical inflation through 2025 and to consumer inflation thereafter was borrowed from a nearly identical 1995 proposal by President Bill Clinton. Indeed, the main difference between the Clinton proposal and the Republican one is that the Clinton proposal would have tied per-enrollee spending to growth in the gross domestic product. Historically, medical inflation has been higher than G.D.P. growth.
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