Campaign Action
Just don't call it a plan.
House Republicans came out of a highly anticipated meeting on health care Thursday morning with some new details on the options GOP leaders are considering to replace the Affordable Care Act, but not with the fully formed plan that those leaders and President Trump have promised. […]
According to numerous members and aides in the room, as well as a policy memo distributed afterward, the House leaders laid out elements of a replacement plan—mostly long-standing Republican concepts like health savings accounts, tax credits and state high-risk pools for the chronically sick—but they did not detail how those elements would fit together or get passed into law.
For the approximately 8,563rd time, we are assured that they're working on it! Any time now! They've got soooo many ideas. Good ideas. Terrific ideas. Just a little tweaking, really, and they'll get the entire fractious Republican conference on the same page and get this done. Except.
The restructuring elements presented Thursday are subject to major internal debates among Republicans. Medicaid, for instance, is a flash point between hard-line conservatives who want to significantly roll back federal spending and members from states that took advantage of the ACA’s Medicaid expansion and are now wary of reducing coverage.
Another significant division concerns how to structure tax breaks to encourage individuals to buy insurance plans. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and other House leaders say they favor refundable tax credits, while many conservatives say they prefer less expansive—and expensive—tax deductions.
As for timing, Rep. Patrick J. Tiberi (R-OH) says "To be determined." House Speaker Paul Ryan says later this month, after the upcoming recess next week. Popular vote loser Donald Trump, however, says "We're doing Obamacare. We're in final stages. We should be submitting the initial plan in March, early March, I would say. … So we'll be submitting health care sometime in early March, mid- March." Or, sometime, you know.
Meanwhile, the Trump regime is issuing confusing proposed rules that will undermine the current system. Insurers and consumers both don't know what to expect and confidence that Republicans will do anything to fix anything is nonexistent. And that's entirely on Republicans' heads.