Republicans seem to understand that repeal of President Obama’s health care law is necessary. Unfortunately, many of them seem to think repeal is sufficient as well. It isn’t. This is why it’s so important that a GOP leader like House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., began presenting a viable plan to replace it with his speech Tuesday at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. The big problem afflicting our health care system is skyrocketing costs. The Kaiser Family Foundation reported this week that in 2011, premiums for employer-based health insurance shot up 8 percent for individuals and 9 percent for families over 2010. As Ryan noted in his speech, “If you look at our debt-and-deficits problem, it really is a health care spending problem.” Health care spending accounts for 25 percent of the U.S. budget (excluding interest payments), and within decades that number will grow to 45 percent.
Obamacare stands to make things worse by imposing a new layer of subsidies and regulations on top of an already broken system. Obama’s solution to the problem of costs rests with 15 bureaucrats (his Independent Payment Advisory Board) charged with rationing care.
