Mandate supporters who advised President Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney on reform packages, think that President Obama's endorsement of the Wyden-Brown legislation is more of a political ploy than reform solution.
As a reminder, Sens. Ron Wyden and Scott Brown have introduced legislation that would move up the date when states could apply for waivers of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to devise their own systems to meet the goals of the ACA from 2017 to 2013.
According to a new article in The Hill, some ACA supporters, and particularly the architect of the mandate, are dismissive.
They say a viable alternative to the healthcare reform law’s requirement for individuals to purchase insurance is unlikely to emerge from a proposal to allow states to opt out of the law within three years, which Obama endorsed under certain circumstances.
“There are alternatives I can think of where you can cover a lot of people, but it would not cover nearly as many people and you spend as much money,” said healthcare economist Jonathan Gruber, who advised President Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) on their healthcare reforms.
“This law could function with alternatives, but it functions so much worse it would be crazy to do so,” Gruber told The Hill.
That's, not surprisingly, rather unimaginative of Gruber. Any system wouldn't function worse, of course, with a public option. As the Veterans Administration medical system, Tri-Care for military personnel, and Medicare have all demonstrated for decades, there is a viable system outside mandated private health insurance, one that can't be argued is unconstitutional (as dodgy as the arguments are that mandate is unconstitutional). And at least one state, Vermont, would pursue a public option as soon as the waiver to do so is available. When it's available, of course, depends on politics.
However, it’s unlikely that the waiver bill will make it through Congress. House Republicans, more focused on efforts to derail the law, quickly refuted claims that the bill would provide flexibility for states to develop their preferred healthcare reforms.
“Perhaps states could opt out of some consumer or employer mandates, which is a minor release valve,” the Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorial page wrote this week. “But they would still need to find other mechanisms to achieve the same liberal priorities, which in practice leaves little room to innovate—especially for a straight tax deduction or credit to purchase individual coverage or alternative insurance designs like high-deductible or value-based plans.”
Ah, those "liberal priorities" of reducing healthcare costs by expanding coverage. It would have been interesting to see how this debate would have played out if the highly popular public option had been included in the law as the "release valve" for opposition to the mandate. We'll never know now, but the reality is that the state waivers and state innovations could very well provide the long term solution to our nation's still broken system.