For nearly seven years, Obamacare has wreaked havoc on the healthcare system. At nearly every turn, the promises then-President Barack Obama and his administration made about the law have fallen apart. Millions of people lost the coverage they liked, health insurance premiums rose dramatically, provider networks became narrower, and insurance companies bolted from the healthcare exchanges.
Recently, Congress passed a budget resolution that begins the process of Obamacare repeal. Budget committees in each chamber will soon begin drafting reconciliation legislation.
Once thought of as the “easy part” of this effort, Obamacare repeal has become the most pressing matter.
In January 2016, Congress presented Obama with Restoring Americans’ Healthcare Freedom Reconciliation Act. Defiant as ever, and knowing Congressional Democrats would protect Obamacare in any override attempt, he quietly vetoed the bill.
The act would have repealed the vast majority of Obamacare, from handouts to insurance companies to tax credits to the individual and employer mandates to the Cadillac tax to Medicaid expansion. This was, as Republicans were told, what could survive the Senate’s “Byrd rule,” which prohibits the upper chamber from considering any section of a bill or amendment that is ruled by the parliamentarian to be extraneous.
While the reconciliation bill fell short of full repeal, it certainly gave Congress a start to accomplish the goal of restoring healthcare freedom. Still, the costly regulations promulgated by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Department of Health and Human Services remained in place.
The Senate didn’t test repeal of the regulations through reconciliation. Republican leadership should have. By the Obama administration’s own admission, as Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute and Paul Winfree of the Heritage Foundation have pointed out, “these regulations are part of an ‘interdependent,’ ‘interlocking,’ and ‘integrated’ set of measures that are ‘designed to function together’ as ‘a comprehensive program’ — as evidenced by the fact that ‘they would take effect on the same date, January 1, 2014.'”
The 115th Congress will soon consider Obamacare repeal through reconciliation. But there are no guarantees that the reconciliation bill will look like the one Congress passed and presented to Obama. The reconciliation bill that passed in the 114th Congress, however, is the minimum Republicans on the Hill and conservative grassroots activists should accept.
The next issue becomes what exactly will replace Obamacare. As Congress begins to construct a long overdue replacement, among the ideas it should pursue are patient-centered alternatives that promote affordability, expand health savings accounts, encourage portability, establish high-risk pools, and give block-grant Medicaid to the states.
If the reconciliation bill Congress considers this year mirrors the one in the previous Congress, which, again, didn’t fully repeal the law, the rallying cry for conservatives should be: Obamacare is not repealed until it’s replaced.
Finally, President Trump and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, R-Wis., have said that a replacement plan will soon follow repeal. Congress has a responsibility to ensure a smooth and quick transition into a post-Obamacare health insurance market. This transition must happen in two years, allowing ample time for insurance companies to adjust policies and submit them to state insurance commissioners for approval.
The American people must have confidence in the healthcare system. Congress must act quickly, and in a timely manner, to throw Obamacare on the dustbin of history and empower patients with the freedom to make decisions that fit their needs, as well as those of their families.
Adam Brandon (@adam_brandon) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is president and CEO of FreedomWorks.
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