For six years congressional Republicans have been making the case that Obamacare had to be repealed. On Wednesday, House speaker Paul Ryan revealed what he dubbed a “better way” for America on health-care policy. It’s also a policy proposal Republicans in the House hope to run on in 2016.
Speaking at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, Ryan said that the House Republican approach was different from Obamacare not just in policy, but in philosophy. He first laid out a critique of Obamacare, calling it a quantity-centered approach, focused on increasing the number of people insured while ignoring the drop in quality of Americans’ plans. Ryan also criticized the bureaucratic approach of Obamacare, saying the law “[treats] patients, real flesh-and-blood human beings like ‘auto parts on an assembly line.’ Interchangeable and insignificant.”
The new Republican plan keeps some of the more popular parts of President Obama’s health-care law, like insurance for patients with pre-existing conditions or allowing people to stay on their parents’ plan until they’re 26.
Beyond that, the GOP proposal throws much of the current system out, including some of its most unpopular elements: the individual and employer mandates.
Members of the speaker’s Task Force on Health Care Reform, a working group of House Republicans, stressed the benefits of allowing patients to decide which plan best fits for them, and allowing them to go across state lines to do so. States would also be awarded for health care designs that lower cost and increase coverage access.
Some of the details on how it would accomplish this are not fully clear. There are few details about how the Republican plan would affect overall costs or the number of Americans covered. It does, however, try to incentivize cutting health care costs and addresses some of the most common criticisms of Obamacare.
Conor Beck is an intern at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
