The GOP "Keep your plan" movement
Published November 3, 2013
by Jonathan Strong, National Review, November 1, 2013.
With the shutdown beginning to fade from view, Obamacare opponents, learning from past battles, are revising their tactics and turning their focus to a push to let people keep their current health insurance.
The House may pass such a proposal in the next few weeks, with the leadership team eying House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Fred Upton’s bill as its likely vehicle. But for a parallel push by Senator Ron Johnson and freshman Representative Ron DeSantis, the House vote is secondary.
“We’re going to work within our state delegations to put some pressure on these Democratic senators so that they’ll start demanding some action,” DeSantis says. “You may see a letter from the Arkansas delegation to Mark Pryor saying, ‘Hey, you said that people could keep their plans. Will you step up and support this?’”
Potential Democratic senators whom Republicans are looking to recruit include embattled senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and the other nine Democratic signatories to a letter calling for an extension to the enrollment period for the exchange market.
The reason for the shift in tactics is a recognition that, for a variety of reasons, House passage of a given bill does not on its own create pressure for the Senate to act.
“Journalists don’t go to Reid and pressure him [about] whether he’s going to bring something up,” DeSantis says.
The flurry of legislative proposals comes as millions of Americans in the individual-health-insurance market are receiving cancellation notices despite repeated vows from President Obama that anyone who liked their current plan would be able to keep it under his health-care overhaul.
House Democratic whip Steny Hoyer, conceding that top Democrats knew Obamacare would force some people off their health-care plans, said on Tuesday that Obama should have included caveats along with his promises that individuals could keep only those plans that were in accordance with burdensome new Obamacare regulations.
Republicans have been warning about this since 2009, but because the law has been implemented gradually over years the results haven’t been palpable until now. “We’ve been saying this until we were hoarse,” says a top Republican. “Now people finally seem to be listening.”
Several senior GOP aides said it is likely that Speaker John Boehner will bring a bill addressing the issue to the floor when the House returns from recess on November 12. But sources close to leadership said no final decision had been made.
Johnson’s bill would remove from the law’s grandfathering clause the stipulations that are causing many existing plans to be canceled. Even small changes in prices eliminate a plan’s eligibility for grandfathered status.
Upton’s bill applies only to the individual-insurance market, not broadly across the much larger group-plan market, and is limited to one year.
If Majority Leader Eric Cantor opts to bring the bill to the House floor, several senior Republicans said, they’re optimistic it would fetch 40 to 70 Democratic votes.
A big X factor in the amount of Democratic support Upton’s bill would receive is what lawmakers hear when they’re back home during the recess. Given the large numbers of people being kicked off their health-care plans and then the lack of a functioning exchange market on which to purchase a new plan, public outcry could be intense.
Another, similar development giving the GOP momentum is news that it will be difficult to access many top hospitals under Obamacare. Some lawmakers are already looking ahead to the beginning of the delayed employer mandate, which will resume just before the 2014 elections, when it could cause massive disruptions in the markets.
Meanwhile, the push to delay the individual mandate is losing its place as the “It” girl among incremental Obamacare fixes.
One argument gaining steam: For people suffering under the law, the fix could hurt more than help.
The mandate is designed to create a financial incentive for young, healthy people who might not otherwise purchase health insurance to join the market, which lowers the cost for older people, who are more likely to need health care. If the young and healthy people drop out, the prices go up for everyone else.
One Machiavellian take on that impact of delaying the individual mandate is that, from the anti-Obamacare perspective, it could be a feature, not a bug, in that it increases the impetus for reform and could prompt the so-called death spiral in which prices keep rising, exacerbating the health-insurance problem while forcing all but the sickest people out of the plans. Two counterarguments are offered. Such a plan is tantamount to harming people on purpose. Second, as some on the right caution, creating an outcry for reform doesn’t necessarily mean the resulting reform would be conservative. For instance, Obama could blame the GOP and seize on the dysfunction to push for single-payer health care.
November 3, 2013 at 3:13 pm
Norm Kelly says:
Demoncrat Hoyer admits they knew Obamacare would force people off their existing plans. Hoyer says that Obama should have put caveats on his statement that falsely convinced people that they would be allowed to keep their plan if they liked it. So instead of an outright lie, Hoyer says that a misstatement or veiled false-hood would have been better than an outright lie. Is this the liberal way, or just good politics? If Obama & the Demoncrats had been honest with people, completely honest not politician honest, would as many people have been willing to suck down socialized medicine plan step 1?
Then Hoyer apparently also said something about those 'burdensome new Obamacare regulations'. So Demoncrats are now admitting that these regulations are burdensome? Burdensome as in forcing people off their existing plans into government plans? Out of the free market and into the government market? Out of the free market into step 1 of socialized medicine? Is this really a Demoncrat? Sounds more like a conservative, like those that were telling the truth about Obamacare from the beginning, and continue to do so.
At this point, there are expected/projected to be more people kicked off the plan of their choice than those that will be added to the insurance rolls. You know, the ones the Demoncrats & bureaucrats in Washington claimed couldn't afford or didn't have access before socialized medicine step 1. They falsely claimed that some 40 to 47 million people couldn't get or couldn't afford health insurance prior to Obamacare. The idea originally was to create a plan, a government run, managed, implemented, regulated plan that would allow everyone in America to get quality health insurance coverage. Now that the plan has been implemented, the bureaucrats are releasing information that as many as 33 million people will be left without health insurance after phase 1 is complete. So let's say 40 million didn't used to have it. After phase 1, 33 million people won't have it. (even with 'new math' 33 million ain't everyone!) So up to 15million people will be forced off of their existing plans, that they wanted & paid for, while only about 7 million who couldn't get it before will have it now. And to Demoncrats & socialists this sounds like a good plan. Really? The entire market is disrupted, people are FORCED off the plan they wanted, FORCED onto a plan they don't/didn't want, and FORCED to pay higher premiums so someone else, that they don't know and aren't related to, can enjoy a subsidized premium. No other solution, including those proposed by Republicans, was satisfactory other than a phased-in government take-over of the market? With a lie or many lies at the heart of Demoncrats plan?
The mandate is designed to create incentive for young healthy people to buy insurance. Something they are not naturally inclined to do. So what exactly is the incentive to get this group of people on government provided/mandated insurance? According to the bureaucrats, all the Demoncrats, all the media outlets, and every editorial I've read, the incentive is a new tax that they will pay if they fail to cooperate. Play or pay. Let's list other incentives for young healthy people to enroll:
they have a guarantee that their premiums will be artificially inflated so older Americans, and people who are not healthy, can have their premiums artificially lowered
the healthy young can stay on their parents insurance until they are 26. Which means that the incentive is eliminated. Which means that healthy young people DON'T have to accept the higher premium, or the penalty, for not buying into socialized medicine step 1
regardless of gender, regardless of sexual activity or proclivity, they will all be FORCED to pay for maternity benefits. Naturally, paying for benefits you won't use will lower your premiums. You have no choice in this benefit. You are FORCED to have it, you are FORCED to pay for it. All for the purpose of lowering the premiums for people who actually do have the need for maternity benefits.
The plan (and hope) of Demoncrats is that phase 1 of socialized medicine is so overwhelmingly hated that there will be an outcry from opposing groups. People who know socialized medicine is doomed to fail will cry out for changes to the plan to make it more palatable. People who didn't get the benefits they expected or were promised will cry out for help from Washington. Demoncrats hope is that the outcry will cross every line. Then they will 'swoop' in to save the day. Of course, they will blame conservatives for ruining the plan and insist that the only solution is a complete take-over of the entire medical delivery system - from insurance to medical care to doctor pay to hospital charges. This will be their single-payer plan, what is actually planned to be 'Obamacare Phase 2'. They've already been talking about how to improve Obamacare, and every time they come to the conclusion that single-payer is the answer. Not less control of a market with more free-market influence, but complete removal of free-market influence. 'Obama could blame the GOP and seize on the dysfunction to push for single-payer health care' is wishful thinking. 'Could' is the wrong word to use. Just like 'lie' is the right word to use when referring to Obama & 'you can keep it', 'will' is the right word when referring to the solution Demoncrats will propose. 'Could' blame Republicans? Where is the doubt coming from? There's not a single plan that Obama has implemented, that the Demoncrats in Congress have implemented, that they don't blame the outcome on Republican interference. Republicans ARE the fault, by default. When the Demoncrats shut down the federal government, not only did Demoncrats automatically blame Republicans, but their supporters in the media continue to blame Republicans without hesitation, without question. There can be no doubt at all that Republicans will continue to be blamed for every failure of socialism. The national debt is, of course, the fault of Republicans. Demoncrats were/are innocent bystanders in this, just like Obama is an innocent bystander in every event that happens INSIDE the White House.
