That's Some 'Plan,' House Republicans
With 63 votes to repeal or undermine the Affordable Care Act under their belts, House Republicans have promised for years that they're *this close* to releasing an ACA replacement. Now, they're saying the time has finally come…
…for a "broad outline."
The Hill: GOP ObamaCare replacement will leave out key dollar figures
House Republicans' ObamaCare replacement plan will not include specific dollar figures on some of its core provisions, and will instead be more of a broad outline, according to lobbyists and aides…
…it will not include specific dollar amounts on how large the tax credit would be, nor will it note which employer health insurance plans would be subject to taxation, lobbyists and aides said.
Republicans have said previously they will not be introducing their ObamaCare replacement plan in the form of a bill, but will instead release a white paper that is less detailed than legislation would be.
Keeping the plan in the form of a broad outline puts off some of the difficult tradeoffs and preempts lines of attack that would be raised with a specific and detailed plan.
The Republican Party has been on the verge of coalescing around its alternative health-care-reform plan since the health-care debate began seven years ago…But guess what? Ryan's plan once again will not be an actual plan at all, but a series of generalized ideas that sound good in the abstract yet fail to specify how they would work…
Even though Republicans keep promising over and over that they're just about to unveil a serious plan to replace Obamacare, and the news media keeps reporting these promises at face value, it never happens. There's a reason for that. The Republican health-care stance combines rhetorical opposition to all of the cruel features of the old health-care system with denunciations of every practical measure in Obamacare required to fix them. The unspecified alternative allows them to promise that nobody will suffer from lack of access to insurance, but without committing to any sacrifices needed to make this happen…
If there was a real Republican plan with real numbers, it would politically implode. The numbers aren't just details to be worked out. The numbers are the whole problem.
MSNBC: Paul Ryan's ‘Better Way' points in a worse direction
…Putting together policy proposals is difficult, so Ryan and House Republicans prefer not to invest the effort.
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.), the chairman of Ryan's health care "task force," recently urged the media to "give us a little time, another month or so," before the Republican alternative to the Affordable Care Act would be ready for its big unveiling. Two months later…they're nearly ready to show us "a broad outline" of ideas we already know they support, and which wouldn't make much of a difference in providing health security to the public.
We've documented the reasons GOP lawmakers keep failing to craft their own ACA alternative, so let's instead focus our attention today on the Speaker's "Better Way" blueprint. It started with Ryan's plan to address poverty, which turned out to be laughable. His national-security vision soon followed, and it was not only ignored, it was quickly contradicted by his party's presumptive presidential nominee. Part Three in the Wisconsin congressman's agenda was a deregulation plan that was just a warmed over version of the stale GOP wish list.
And the next step, apparently, is a "detailed policy paper" outlining the Republican alternative to the Affordable Care Act – without the details.
So, the saga continues. House Republicans just love to keep us guessing – and they still don't have a health care plan, beyond stripping more than 20 million Americans of the affordable, quality coverage they've gained through the ACA.