Editorial Board Roundup: #PayMoreForLess Bill 'heartless, reckless'
New York Times Editorial – No Wonder the Republicans Hid the Health Bill
Republican House leaders have spent months dodging questions about how they would replace the Affordable Care Act with a better law, and went so far as to hide the draft of their plan from other lawmakers. No wonder. The bill they released on Monday would kick millions of people off the coverage they currently have. So much for President Trump's big campaign promise: "We're going to have insurance for everybody" — with coverage that would be "much less expensive and much better."
More than 20 million Americans gained health care coverage under the A.C.A., or Obamacare. Health experts say most would lose that coverage under the proposal.
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While working people lose health care, the rich would come out winners. The bill would eliminate the taxes on businesses and individuals (people making more than $200,000 a year) who fund Obamacare. The tax cuts would total about $600 billion over 10 years, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.
Republicans have been vowing to repeal the Affordable Care Act even before it became law in 2010. But they still haven't come up with a workable replacement. Instead, the G.O.P.'s various factions are now haggling over just how many millions of Americans they are willing to harm.
Washington Post Editorial – An Obamacare repeal that's both heartless and reckless
THE AMERICAN Health Care Act…marks a sharp departure in at least one crucial respect: fiscal responsibility.
The bill would repeal a vast array of the Affordable Care Act's pay-fors — taxes on upper-income people and on health-care-related entities including drugs, insurance and medical devices. To finance the spending it still envisions, the bill would replace those by cutting Medicaid and other assistance to poor and near-poor people. This is not only heartless, it is reckless…
…Republicans are poised to mark up their bill without a full analysis from the Congressional Budget Office of its budgetary impact or — crucially — of how many people the proposal would (or would not) cover.
…The bill would substantially reduce the amount of assistance that low-income people get to buy coverage on the individual insurance market, it would ramp up how much more insurers can charge older people relative to younger people, and it would remove Obamacare's crucial link between actual insurance costs and the federal assistance people get…
…a lot of poor people would pay a substantial price to give them that satisfaction. Chances are, so would the federal deficit.
USA Today Editorial – What's the rush on health care?
The plan to replace Obamacare offered by House Republicans stretches to more than a hundred pages. It deals with an impossibly complex subject, with myriad unintended consequences. It has not been "scored" by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) for its price tag and impact on those who have insurance.
So what are Republicans planning to do? Rush it through.
In contrast, Obamacare was the subject of lengthy public hearings and private negotiations during the winter, spring and summer of 2009. The first House committee action came that July, after the CBO came out with its estimates of the cost and the number of people who'd gain insurance.
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None of these things has been adequately considered — and won't if Republicans keep trying to ram their measure through without knowing how much it would cost and how many people it would cover.
Los Angeles Times Editorial – The GOP isn't replacing all of Obamacare — just the parts that work
The House GOP leadership's proposal for repealing and replacing Obamacare would actually leave much of the 2010 Affordable Care Act intact — except for the parts that make it work.
Instead of fixing the problems Republicans have been complaining about, it would make them worse. And rather than making insurance affordable to more people, it would raise costs for lower-income Americans and cut them for everyone else.
The bills' authors don't seem to be trying to improve the healthcare system; they just seem to be trapped by a promise they made to voters without regard to the damage it might do. In short, it's a baffling plan with no clear objective that's deservedly getting blasted from all sides, with conservatives, liberals and libertarians all trashing it.
…If the Republicans' goal is to drive more people off insurance and into hospital emergency rooms, these bills are just the ticket.
National Review Editorial – A Disappointing Start
Moreover, the legislation has some serious flaws even as a first step toward full repeal and replacement…
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All in all, though, the bill is a disappointment…
San Francisco Chronicle Editorial (California) – The House needs to slow down on health care
The one group that's a sure winner under the House plan? Insurance companies.
They'll be allowed to impose a surcharge, up to 30 percent, for those who have a gap in their insurance coverage. (Effectively, they'll receive the cash penalty instead of the Internal Revenue Service.) Health care insurance executives will also receive a new tax break on salaries they receive over $500,000.
It's impossible to claim this bill is a fine substitute for the Affordable Care Act's shortcomings. Even some Republicans in the House and Senate are already criticizing it.
That may explain why House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., is trying to rush a vote on it. It's scheduled to be voted on by the two relevant House committees, Energy and Ways and Means, as early as Wednesday — before the Congressional Budget Office has had a chance to tell the public what the true cost of it may be.
This is no way to decide health care for millions of Americans.
Santa Cruz Sentinel Editorial (California) – GOP health plan: "Access" over coverage?
It's not exactly a repeal, or even a full-fledged replacement.
But, at long last, Republicans have a health care plan to call their own. It's just that it's more a revision — a reform, if you like — of the existing Affordable Care Act, AKA Obamacare.
Republicans don't yet know the new plan's cost, or whether it will add or subtract from the national deficit, since the legislation hasn't been evaluated yet by the Congressional Budget Office. Republican conservatives Tuesday already predicted the new "Obamacare lite" plan was dead on arrival and that a "clean repeal" is necessary.
The proposed measures also would change Medicaid from an automatic entitlement to a per capita allotment on funding to states, which over time would probably slow the rise in payments to the program. Planned Parenthood would get defunded as well.
San Diego Union Tribune Editorial (California) – House GOP's stingy version of Obamacare is not true reform
After years of promises and weeks of work, the overhaul of the Affordable Care Act released by House Republicans on Monday and praised by President Trump on Tuesday is a disappointment in large part because it was crafted with one overriding goal: to make small enough changes to the ACA that the Senate could pass the bill with a simple majority "budget reconciliation" maneuver instead of the 60 votes needed to survive a Democratic filibuster of a more substantial bill…
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A work in progress? As is, this isn't progress at all.
The Mercury News Editorial(California) – Why GOP health care plan is an unmitigated disaster
House Speaker Paul Ryan released the plan Monday, and Trump enthusiastically endorsed it Tuesday — even though it covers fewer Americans, increases costs for low-income and senior citizens, increases the deficit, defunds Planned Parenthood and does zero to reduce overall health care costs. Zero.
Who does it help? The wealthiest Americans and the profits of insurance companies.
Despite the dramatic effects of this plan nationwide, Ryan wants to ram it through Congress.
Ryan wants the full House to act on his plan before it goes into recess April 7. Why? Because he knows the independent CBO scoring will show how disastrous the GOP plan is for everyone but the rich.
The Fresno Bee Editorial (California) – Trumpcare: GOP prescription to make America sick again
House Republican leaders claim their plan will keep Obamacare's popular aspects – let parents keep children on their health insurance until age 26, and protect coverage for people with pre-existing conditions – but then they repeal the mandates and taxes that underpin them. That's just one terminal flaw among many in a plan that would fleece middle-aged people, punish women, strand the poor and lavish tax cuts on the rich if passed as proposed.
The GOP fix simply doesn't make sense. Trumpcare would offer tax credits based on age and income as incentives to people to buy insurance if they can't get insurance at work. But the young and working poor live paycheck to paycheck, not tax break to tax break. And for middle-aged workers, the credits appear to be utterly insufficient.
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Voters should remember these names, too, when they wonder who, in the name of dogma, decided to make America sick again.
Boston Globe Editorial (Massachusetts) – GOP sails into the health care storm
The deeply problematic plan would roil insurance markets and destabilize state budgets. Although the Congressional Budget Office hasn't analyzed the legislation yet, it's expected that it would cause about 15 million Americans to lose their health coverage.
It goes without saying that GOP leaders have nobody to blame but themselves for their predicament, after having offered nothing but simplistic sloganeering about health care policy for the last six years.
Charlotte Observer Editorial (North Carolina) – Obamacare repeal fails on two big fronts
Fewer Americans will have health insurance if the Republican alternative to the Affordable Care Act is enacted.
That's the crucial takeaway from the American Health Care Act, because it goes to the heart of the health and financial stability of everyday Americans.
The consensus from analysts from both sides of the political divide is 10 million or more people will lose coverage under the plan, reversing a trend from the past few years that saw the nation reach its lowest uninsured rate ever.
Don't be fooled by Republican claims that "access to health insurance" is akin to having actual health care coverage. Every American also has access to a BMW dealership – but only a relative handful can afford to buy a new expensive luxury car. That kind of thinking, though, seems to undergird the GOP plan, as evidenced by Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah, who suggested poor people could afford insurance if they just skipped their next iPhone purchase.
The American Health Care Act would make life easier for the healthy and wealthy and harder for the sick and poor.
Pennlive.com Editorial (Pennsylvania) – There's nothing 'affordable' about the GOP's Affordable Care Act replacement
As anyone with a glancing familiarity can tell you, the choices they make about their healthcare and how they'll pay for it are among that the American family will ever face.
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After bashing Democrats in 2010 for ramming through a bill that they allege no lawmaker was given time to read, GOP leaders this week introduced a healthcare "reform" plan free of estimates on how much it would cost or how many people it would cover.
Republicans need to slow down and read their own bill. There's nothing remotely affordable -- or humane -- about it.
San Antonio Express News Editorial (Texas) – Key facts missing in ACA repeal
For alleged fiscal hawks, U.S. House Republicans are acting recklessly in their haste to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.
It looks as if they will be voting without any scoring by the Congressional Budget Office. This will leave factors unknown that should reasonably dictate how representatives vote — how much this replacement will cost and how many Americans will be getting coverage, how many will be getting lesser coverage and how many are stripped of coverage.
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Without knowing if more, less or the same number of Americans will be covered, and with the overall cost a mystery, how votes can occur on this plan is an even bigger mystery. Answer those questions and public confidence is more possible. Or not.
Houston Chronicle Editorial (Texas) – Repeal and replace
It's hell to be poor, longtime Houston news personality Marvin Zindler used to say.
But it's great to be the CEO of a health insurance company, especially if Congress passes House Speaker Paul Ryan's replacement for the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.
… On its face, however, this Trumpcare bill looks more like a tax cut for the rich than a health care act for America.
Dallas Morning News Editorial (Texas) – Telling poor Americans to choose between iPhones and health care is not a solution
Americans across the income spectrum are already making difficult choices when it comes to affording health care. And the working poor, who would be most affected by Republicans' plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act, are making onerous choices just to get by.
Do they stay at home with a sick child, even if they might lose their job? Do they pay the rent or the gas bill or the water bill or buy food? Do they see a doctor they can't afford — or wait until they're forced to visit an emergency room?
These are real-life choices made by people who won't have a congressional pension to look forward to upon retirement or a pathway to a job on K Street. The price of a smartphone — which, by the way, is a growing necessity in the modern world — isn't the reason they are living paycheck to paycheck or can't afford health care. Life is.
The Charleston Gazette-Mail Editorial (West Virginia) – Surprise, GOP health plan good for the healthy and wealthy
For years, when the question was the Affordable Care Act, Republicans had just one answer: Repeal it. Get rid of it. But now, they're learning that responsible governance is harder than just yelling.
The long-awaited health care plan put forward Monday by Speaker Paul Ryan and other House Republicans is far from the full repeal that the GOP has been screaming for.
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And of course, there's a tax break for the rich, because what Republican proposal would be complete without one? Individuals making more than $200,000 would see the taxes on their investment income and wages, levied to help pay for the ACA, go away.
It's clear the GOP doesn't know how they're going to pay for this…
Republicans aren't waiting for the Congressional Budget Office to tell them how much their plan will cost — deficits are only a problem to federal Republicans when there is a Democrat in the White House. Nor are they waiting to see how many people would lose coverage.
Governing responsibly is hard work. After eight years of standing for nothing except the opposite of whatever President Barack Obama was for, congressional Republicans might be learning this.