Just days from now, former President Joe Biden’s temporary COVID-19-era tax credits, which provide fully subsidized healthcare plans to more than 9 million Obamacare enrollees, are set to expire. For Republicans, allowing these subsidies to expire will be a victory in itself, saving taxpayers an estimated $448 billion, even as the underlying Obamacare subsidy continues to cover more than 80% of the typical enrollee’s premium.
However, letting a multibillion-dollar COVID-19 boondoggle expire is the absolute bare minimum Americans expect from us, and it is hardly a fix for the unmitigated economic failure that is Obamacare.
Year over year, the systemic failures of the Affordable Care Act continue to add up. Since its inception, benchmark premiums have more than doubled, provider networks continue to shrink, and “coverage,” the justification upon which the entire government-run system hinges, increasingly means less and less in terms of actual healthcare for Americans.
RESTORING AMERICA: A REPUBLICAN HEALTHCARE PACKAGE REMAINS WITHIN REACH
Obamacare has failed outright. No amount of subsidies or tax hikes, short of being financially oppressive, can save it. The entire framework is so fiscally naive that one is entirely justified in arguing that the bill was always built to fail, ultimately moving us toward a single-payer system, which many Democrats have been overtly in favor of for years.
Healthcare in America is at a breaking point. Congress must provide a genuine off-ramp to Obamacare, one that puts patients first, restores free market competition, and actually allows consumers to choose the healthcare that best fits their needs, not Washington’s arbitrary markers of success. Anything short of genuine policy aimed at saving Americans from Obamacare’s core failures will simply be akin to rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship.
My vision for healthcare reform throws Americans a true lifeline, one that not only addresses these core failures but also provides an alternative to Obamacare’s failing architecture with market-driven solutions that put patients first.
The crux of Obamacare’s shortcomings lies with its stream of endless government mandates. Age-banded price controls effectively translate to young Americans footing the bill for high-cost elderly patients, making them overpay on otherwise lower premiums. “Essential health benefits” require young single men to pay for elements of their health plan they literally can’t use, such as maternity leave and newborn care. The medical loss ratio, requiring insurers to spend 85% of premiums on medical claims, means they have no incentive to lower premium costs for consumers — in fact, it’s the opposite.
The government subsidies that keep insurers above water in a failing market are only available to insurers who underprice plans by slashing networks, excluding major hospitals, and driving patients into the cheapest possible silver plans — a government-backed race to the bottom.
As a result, millions in the middle class pay full price as premiums rise year over year, while subsidized enrollees pay as little as $0 for increasingly minimalized “healthcare.”
Everyone loses.
The legislative package I am advancing gives Americans an alternative to all of that. By offering supercharged tax-advantaged health savings accounts, affectionately titled MAHA accounts, Americans would not only be able to contribute $25,000 a year tax-deductible to their accounts, but employers could also fully satisfy any Obamacare mandate by simply contributing $450 a month to their employees’ accounts, a much cheaper alternative to traditional group plans.
We want to give Americans the same tax advantages as corporations. With a MAHA account, individuals can use their savings to pay insurance premiums, with contributions and withdrawals both completely tax-free.
Owning a MAHA account would empower Americans to break free from the market failures of the ACA-regulated risk pool, allowing users to purchase insurance in a parallel risk pool devoid of market-distorting regulations and insurers to underwrite on age, weight, and smoking habits, creating direct incentives that reward healthy behavior.
MAHA plans get zero direct premium subsidies — ever. Insurers sink or swim on price and quality alone.
While HSAs are typically criticized as a tax-advantaged tool exclusively for the wealthy, my policy framework eliminates the red tape and allows all Americans to benefit. If you like your plan on the traditional ACA exchange, you can keep it and even use a MAHA account to pay down your premium costs.
Overnight, this market-based alternative would force insurers and providers to compete for millions of Americans who are newly empowered to take their tax-free savings wherever they see fit.
My proposal would restore a functioning patient-provider relationship, replacing the moral hazard driving Obamacare’s death spiral with transparency and consumers who have real skin in the game.
EDITORIAL: WHAT TODAY’S OBAMACARE VOTE MEANS
For the first time in over a decade, “coverage” could actually mean care.
Extending temporary subsidies for Obamacare does nothing but tether Americans to a sinking ship. No amount of patchwork can be a substitute for genuine reform. Congress must pass an alternative. Failure to do so virtually guarantees the manifestation of a fully socialized healthcare system in a matter of years.
Eric Burlison represents Missouri’s 7th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.
