Best GOP Obamacare-repeal strategy: Replace with Dr. Tom Price plan

Best GOP Obamacare-repeal strategy: Replace with Dr. Tom Price plan

tom priceObamacare can’t be “fixed”. But neither could the Medicare-going-Bankrupt, Medicaid-bankrupting-states, and state-insurance-market-monopolies system that prevailed for decades before Obamacare doubled-down on health care and private health insurance disasters.

Premium prices for individual, self-employed and small-business plans were prohibitive for 20 years before Obamacare and wages have been stagnant for just as long in the U.S. economy in no small part due to the price paid by employers large and small.

Obamacare must be repealed and the health care system made more like like a free market. Moreover, the Republican Party needs to be seen as more than just a party of “no” seeking a return to a dysfunctional status quo. Republicans need to be seen offering an affirmative solution to rising premium prices, the uninsured and debt-exploding government-entitlement health care programs.

The Heritage Foundation and Rep. Dr. Tom Price (R-Ga) shows the GOP and America the way:

Heritage Plan:

Principles for Reform

To allow Americans to reclaim control of their own health care and benefit from competition in a free market for insurance and health care, Congress should repeal the Obamacare statute and enact patient-centered, market-based reforms based on five principles:

  • Choose, control, and carry your own health insurance;
  • Let free markets provide the insurance and health care services that people want;
  • Encourage employers to provide a portable health insurance benefit to employees;
  • Assist those who need help through civil society, the free market, and the states; and
  • Protect the right of conscience and unborn children.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) moves health care in the wrong direction. It puts government, not patients, in charge of individual health care decisions. Moreover, it fails to meet the promises laid out by President Barack Obama. With each passing day, it becomes clearer that Obamacare will not reduce premiums for average American families, bend the cost curve in health care spending, or bring down the deficit. For these reasons, among others, Obamacare must be repealed.

However, a return to the status quo before Obamacare is not the final step. Policymakers should pursue reforms based on five basic principles. Adopting such reforms would move American health care in the right direction: toward a patient-centered, market-based health care system.

Price Plan:

Rep. Tom Price (R., Ga.) is tired of hearing that the GOP is not proposing alternatives to Obamacare.

Price has proposed variations of comprehensive health care reform during three different Congresses. The first proposal came in 2009, then again in 2011, and most recently inJune 2013.

“You can’t beat something with nothing,” Price told the Free Beacon. “I think you always have to have that contrasting positive, principled solution and that’s what we’ve been putting forward.”

Price’s latest bill, the Empowering Patients First Act of 2013, has 40 cosponsors and is currently in a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee.

To date, none of the proposals have made it out of committee or enjoyed support of GOP leadership. However, as the Affordable Care Act faces a turbulent rollout, Price’s legislation seems increasingly well positioned to warrant reconsideration.

And as Price-plan-advocate George Will points out, unlike the Price plan, Obamacare is at least anti- and probably unconstitutional, despite the histrionics of Chief Justice John Roberts and four other lawyers in black robes of the Supreme Court:

Mike DeVine

Mike DeVine

Mike DeVine is a former op-ed columnist at the Charlotte Observer and legal editor of The (Decatur) Champion (legal organ of DeKalb County, Georgia). He is currently with the Ruf Law Firm in Atlanta Metro and conservative voice of the Atlanta Times News.

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