Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker revealed his plan to repeal and replace Obamacare on Tuesday in Minnesota, and sold it as an alternative to the GOP leadership’s inability to gut President Obama’s signature healthcare legislation.
He posted his full plan online, which can be read in its entirety here.
“Republican leaders in Washington told us during the campaign last year that we needed a Republican Senate to repeal Obamacare. Well, Republicans have been in charge of both houses of Congress since January and there still isn’t a bill on the president’s desk to repeal Obamacare,” Walker said. “We fought, we won, we got results, and we did it in a state that hasn’t gone Republican since 1984.”
Walker said on his first day in the White House he would send legislation to Congress based upon his “Day One Patient Freedom Plan,” which would repeal and replace Obamacare. The plan would give individuals tax credits toward the purchase of health insurance that would vary based upon the patient’s age.
Walker’s plan also allows for the purchase of health insurance across state lines and incentivizes the use of health savings accounts through tax credits and increased tax-free contributions to HSAs. It reforms Medicaid by capping the level of funds that the federal government sends to states and gives states more discretion about how to spend such funds.
A senior Walker aide told reporters on Tuesday morning that the governor’s plan amounted to the first substantial plan to repeal and replace Obamacare “this year.” The language seemed to be a tip of the hat to Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who released his own plan last year. There are some important and noticeable differences between the Walker and Jindal plans, as the Washington Examiner‘s Philip Klein noted earlier.
Jindal’s approach favors tax deductions for individuals while Walker’s plan includes tax credits for individuals. Jindal’s plan would lower people’s taxes so that they might better purchase health insurance, whereas Walker’s idea would require the federal government spend money on the patient, via a tax credit.
Walker’s campaign has said his plan would assuredly lower health insurance premiums by 25 percent, and his plan explicitly states, “My replacement plan would lower the cost of health coverage for all Americans.”
Walker’s plan also takes great pains to tie Obamacare to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and his plan frames the Walker plan as a choice between his plan and Democrats’ ideas — rather than other options put forward by Republicans.
“Obamacare is just the first part of a broader liberal agenda to remove control from the states and put federal regulators in charge of consumers’ individual health care choices,” the plan states. “It should come as no surprise that many pillars of Obamacare can be traced to “HillaryCare,” Hillary Clinton’s 1993 health care plan. And the proposals in Hillary’s “American Health Choices Plan,” released during her 2008 presidential campaign, provide a useful link between her 1993 plan and her present-day ideas. If given the opportunity, Hillary Clinton will likely try to “fix” the flaws of Obamacare by finishing the job the Democrats started when they took that fateful vote in 2010. Under a Hillary Clinton presidency, Americans could expect proposals similar to Europe’s single-payer system, including federal price controls and further restrictions on private sector innovation in the health care industry.”
Hours before the formal rollout of Walker’s plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s campaign promoted an op-ed published Monday detailing the senator’s own healthcare plan. Walker has railed against Republican lawmakers’ efforts — and the lack thereof — to reform Obamacare, in recent days. Walker appeared on Glenn Beck’s radio show on Monday and agreed that GOP leaders such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky were “part of the problem.”
“I’m angry at the so-called leaders in Washington particularly in the Republican Party who claimed they were going to repeal Obamacare if they got the Senate majority,” Walker told Beck.
Onstage in Minnesota on Tuesday, Walker name-checked House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price of Michigan and House Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, before criticizing other members of the GOP. He said Obamacare has become a good punchline for other candidates on the stump, but that he has a plan to back up his rhetoric.
“A lot of Republicans talk about repealing Obamacare, we’ve actually got a plan,” Walker said.
While Walker’s plan frames the debate about Obamacare as a choice between the governor and Clinton, Walker’s recent remarks suggest he will largely sell the plan to GOP primary voters by portraying his ideas as an alternative to congressional Republicans’ inaction. A Walker campaign aide told reporters that the governor discussed his proposal with individual members of Congress, but chose not to say which ones and offered instead that “this is his plan.”
