Concerning the new official Republican House health care proposal, Michael Cannon writes,
The leadership bill therefore creates the potential, if not the certainty, of a series of crises that Congress will need address, and that will crowd out other GOP priorities, in late 2017 before the 2018 plan year begins, and again leading up to the 2018 elections. If Congress gets health reform wrong on its first try, health reform could consume most of President Trump’s first term. Pressure from Democrats, the media, and constituents could prevent Republicans from moving on to tax reform, infrastructure spending, or even Supreme Court nominees.
Avik Roy is more favorably disposed to the proposal, but with significant misgivings. I tend to agree with his “cons” and disagree with his “pros.”
The WaPo story on the proposal says
four key Republican senators, all from states that opted to expand Medicaid under the ACA, said they would oppose any new plan that would leave millions of Americans uninsured.
It would take a lot of nerve to say: Our plan is to hold households responsible for obtaining health insurance. Some households will “lose” coverage that was heavily subsidized by the government. But if you cannot stand up and say that, then you cannot change the direction of health care policy away from socialism.
As I wrote recently, the Overton Window has moved, so that responsibility for health insurance is strictly with the Federal government, not with the household. Along similar lines, Philip Klein writes,
Barring radical changes, Republicans will not be passing a bill that ushers in a new era of market-based healthcare. In reality, the GOP will either be passing legislation that rests on the same philosophical premise as Obamacare, or will pass nothing at all, and thus keep Obamacare itself in place.
After digesting these and other analyses, I am inclined to think that Obamacare will not be repealed and replaced during the Trump Administration. Instead, it will be repealed and replaced by the Democrats the next time they are in power. And the replacement will not look very market-friendly.