Sorry, guys. Your dream of Obamacare repeal hasn't arrived.
As Joan wrote
earlier, House Republicans have scheduled a 1PM ET vote on their "fix" for health plan cancellations. But even though Republicans claim their bill will achieve a policy goal shared by both congressional Democrats and the White House—allowing people to keep their current health care plans if they want to keep them—it's not going to attract many votes from the Democratic side of the aisle, and the fundamental reason for that is simple: The Republican plan is nothing but Obamacare repeal with a different name, and no matter what Ted Cruz tells himself, Democrats are never going to embrace Obamacare repeal.
Not only would it be political malfeasance for Democrats to run away from Obamacare after spending three years supporting it, running away from the notion that all Americans deserve affordable, quality health insurance would be immoral. That's not to say they won't support changes and adjustments to Obamacare, but the House GOP plan isn't a simple tweak: By allowing insurers to sign up new customers to grandfathered plans, it would create an entirely new health insurance marketplace designed to compete with Obamacare, a marketplace without regulations or protections.
Yes, unregulated plans would probably be cheaper, at least initially, but they'd also be junk, and the costs of the good plans on the exchanges would skyrocket. Moreover, the House GOP plan would keep the mandate in place, so people would be forced to choose between exchange plans (which would be much more expensive than they are now) or junk insurance. It's not hard to see why most House Democrats have figured out it would be insane to vote for this, especially given the fact they are offering an alternative plan that actually would achieve the goal Republicans claim to be pursuing: Allowing existing consumers of health plans to continue their plans if they want.
Unlike the Republican plan, which leaves it up to insurers to decide whether they want to let consumers continue their plan, the House Democratic plan would let consumers make the decision. And it would do it without taking a wrecking a ball to Obamacare. For all the drama and speculation, at the end of the day, what we're going to see is nothing has really changed: Republicans are still fundamentally opposed to Obamacare, both in principle and practice, and Democrats support it.