President Trump now suggests he may just let Obamacare collapse and blame Democrats since they did nothing to solve the problem. Grace-Marie Turner, President of the Galen Institute, said that strategy won’t work. “They are going to be blamed for the millions of people that would lose coverage if nothing is done because these exchanges are failing, insurance companies are signing up to provide coverage next year because they are losing so much money providing so-called insurance under Obamacare rules that don’t work,” she said. “Republicans own it. How can you have the White House and both houses of Congress and say that you don’t own this problem?” Turner asked.
But Turner is also slamming Democrats for asserting that premiums and deductibles are skyrocketing because Republican promises to repeal Obamacare are creating uncertainty among insurers. “That is just so completely beyond the realm of reality,” she said. “The reason that costs are going up under Obamacare is because of the flawed structure of the bill that, for one thing, encourages people to wait until they’re sick to sign up for coverage and that provides all sorts of opportunities for people to drop coverage and game the system.”
“Washington-centralized solutions are not the answer, whether Republicans are developing them or Democrats are developing them,” Turner said.
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Galen Institute President Grace-Marie Turner is a veteran of Washington health-care debates and was a fierce opponent of the Clinton health-care reform effort in the 1990s and Obamacare since 2009. She is encouraged by what she sees in the American Health Care Act and says the realities on Capitol Hill force this kind of legislation.
“It’s a first step. They’re pushing as far as they can with the process they have to go through. They do not expect any Democrats, in the House or the Senate, to vote for this. That means they have to do this through a particularly difficult process called reconciliation that limits the kinds of things you can repeal,” Turner told WND and Radio America.
“They can’t repeal everything in the law through this process, because it has to have direct spending and budget implications. They’re doing as much as they can and they have plans to go forward with other pieces of legislation, for example, that will allow people to purchase health insurance across state lines. That’s not possible through this particular pathway.”
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