George Rebane

As Obamacare is disintegrating on its launch pad (here, here, and here), Republicans should do more than just stand by roasting marshmallows in the flames – so argue Ramesh Ponnuru and Yuval Levin in ‘A Conservative Alternative to Obamacare’.  While several alternative and mandate-free approaches have been proposed by Republicans to overhaul America’s government mangled healthcare markets, none have gotten the traction that is now possible with the disintegration of Obamacare.  

RR has long argued for a more than less market-oriented solution to making healthcare available for all Americans.  Ponnuru and Levin make the case that “the Democrats are now making things worse doesn’t mean the public wants to keep that prior system, or that Republicans should.”  The previous system was not a free-market, wild west version of capitalism.  “On the contrary: (America’s healthcare) has consisted chiefly of massive and inefficient entitlements that threaten to bankrupt the nation; the lopsided tax treatment of employer-provided coverage that creates incentives for waste and overspending; and an underdeveloped individual market struggling to fill the gaps.”

The Ponnuru/Levin plan rests on “a flat and universal tax benefit for coverage. … People who have pre-existing conditions when the new rules take effect would be able to buy coverage through subsidized, high-risk pools.”  Please read their article for more detail.

The remaining argument, still acceptable to the daily diminishing number of true believers, is that Obamacare is the only game in town to replace a system that worked well for 85% of Americans.  That simply is not the case, and is just one of the more significant bamboozles in a legion of lies that continue to blanket every piece of the cynically named Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.  Ponnuru and Levin conclude that “defenders of ObamaCare are using the absence of a Republican alternative to suggest that their law is the only answer to the grave problems of American health care and that without it millions of Americans would continue to lack access to coverage. That argument is their final trump card. It is time for Republicans to take it away.”

[Addendum]  Did you catch the ongoing desperate attempt by our Chief Community Organizer to back pedal (and back peddle) his infamous ‘if you like it, you can keep it’ promise?  Now he says that he’ll allow people to keep the existing healthcare policies that they like.  The problems with this knee-jerk act of desperation are numerous, including how the insurance companies can respond, having spent months/years rejiggling their plans to make them Obamacare-compliant and getting them approved by the states’ insurance commissions.  For openers our former professor of constitutional law still has no clue about what the Constitution says on the Executive’s ability to peremptorily change laws passed by the Legislative Branch.  The man still behaves as if he were some tinpot martinet in a banana republic, making, changing, and retracting laws as his political whims dictate.  More here.

[15nov13 update]  Washington, D.C. – Congressman Tom McClintock (R-CA) today delivered the following remarks on the House floor:

Obamacare and The Rule of Law
November 15, 2013

Mr. Speaker:

            Yesterday, we heard yet another empty promise from the President: that by fiat he can delay provisions of law under Obamacare that have already cost a staggering FIVE MILLION Americans their health insurance.

            Notice that he didn’t say the law has changed.   He simply said that he will ignore the law, and he invites health insurers to do the same.

            This is a constitutional abomination.  We live in a nation of laws and not of men.  The principle Constitutional responsibility of the President is to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.  

            If a law is a bad one, we change that law.  We don’t ignore it.

            As a practical matter, the President’s announcement has no effect.  Since the law hasn’t changed, the criminal and civil liability that a health insurer would incur for disobeying it hasn’t changed either.

            The President’s announcement cruelly gives people false hope while severely damages the fundamental concept that separates democracy from despotism: the rule of law.