This is certainly optimistic reporting from The New York Times.
House Republicans, responding to criticism that repealing the Affordable Care Act would leave millions without health insurance, said on Thursday that their goal in replacing President Obama’s health law was to guarantee “universal access” to health care and coverage, not necessarily to ensure that everyone actually has insurance. […]
“Our goal here is to make sure that everybody can buy coverage or find coverage if they choose to,” a House leadership aide told journalists on the condition of anonymity at a health care briefing organized by Republican leaders. […]
“We would like to get to a point where we have what we call universal access, where everybody is able to access coverage to some degree or another,” the aide said.
That sounds an awful lot like what we had before Obamacare. Remember this: "I mean, people have access to health care in America […] After all, you just go to an emergency room," from George W. Bush back in 2007? There's a few qualifications in this story, like "Republicans have not settled on the details or the timing of their replacement plan," and the "aide said House Republicans had not decided on the future of cost-sharing subsidies," and "Republicans have not decided how to proceed." And yet, it concludes: "In any event, the House leadership aide said, Republicans do not intend to pull the rug out from people who have gained insurance under the Affordable Care Act." That's easy to say, but what are they going to do besides make promises? What they've done for the past six years? Nothing?
"Universal access" is now going to be the shiny object that distracts the traditional media, but as Charles Gaba points out "to some degree or another" is the key phrase here. Based on the piece-meal ideas they offered up so far, for the people who need it most that degree will be woefully insufficient.
