No, this isn't a recipe for disaster at all. Republicans seem to have figured out a plan to make a plan to replace Obamacare, buying themselves another two or three or whatever years to come up with a coherent replacement plan everyone can agree on, since they haven't managed to do it in the past six years. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) signaled this "repeal and delay" approach first.
Alexander, the chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee that will play a central role in repealing and replacing Obamacare, signaled that the process will have to be incremental rather than rapid if Republicans want their plan to succeed. […]
Alexander's comments offer insight into what is sure to be a complicated and politically fraught process, but he remained vague on details. Alexander said he sees major problems with the Obamacare exchanges, but assured reporters that he agreed with President-elect Trump's position that people with pre-existing conditions should still be protected under the law.
This is what Alexander actually said about the exchanges: "The exchanges are the first problem, they need to be repealed, the individual mandate needs to be repealed." Which suggests that Alexander, chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, has no idea how the law works or what the the exchanges are—the place where competing companies offer their plans and people sign up. It's probably the least problematic part of the system. So that tells you Alexander, at least, has spent the last six years not knowing anything about the law he's proposing to replace. Anyway, this now appears to be the plan, repeal it right away so they can say they kept the promise, but not have it end for a few years so that they can get something (which is who knows what at this point) in place. There's just one itty-bitty problem with that—insurers bailing out of the system early because of the uncertainty this would create:
While 2017 coverage is already locked in, an exodus of insurers for 2018 would throw coverage into doubt for the roughly 10 million people enrolled in ObamaCare plans.
“If they know the law is ending sometime soon, I don’t know that they’re going to be so excited about sticking around,” Larry Levitt, an expert on the healthcare law at the Kaiser Family Foundation, said of insurers.
The insurers will have to make their decision about whether they participate in the market in 2018 early next year, while the Republicans are busy trying to do repeal. Putting off replace will just create even more chaos. The only bright side here is that the insurance companies are telling Republicans this—telling them that they are not at all happy with all this. And the insurance lobby is very, very powerful, as the lack of a public option in the law attests.