Sorry Fred. It will take more than teamwork to fix GOP healthcare dysfunction

GOP 2017. What a team! Why can’t the Republican Congress manage to repeal and replace Obamacare, considering the whole party has campaigned for seven years on the promise to do just that? According to Fred Barnes of the Wall Street Journal the answer is simple: the Republicans are not playing as a team. In Barnes’ reality, if the GOP would only treat politics as the team sport it is they could create “a more free-market healthcare system in which people can buy the insurance they want, not what government requires.” It sounds so beautiful I’m sure everyone will put aside their differences and make it happen! Alas, with two more Republican Senators coming out against the bill the same day the Op-Ed was published, it doesn’t seem that Mr. Barnes is making much headway. But Barnes has misunderstood the real causes of Republican disarray on healthcare. For his benefit, here are some: The Affordable Care Act is actually a well thought out, moderate piece of legislation, not a looney left-wing one. It contains a variety of market oriented and conservative principles that were designed to encourage Republicans to vote for it. Major facets include the individual mandate (personal responsibility, supposed to be a conservative idea remember?) and the insurance exchanges/marketplaces, where private insurers compete for business. Despite what Republicans say now, there were numerous attempts to bring them into the fold in 2009 and 2010 and enact a bip...
Source: Health Business Blog - Category: Health Management Authors: Tags: Policy and politics Source Type: blogs