Let’s repeal Obamacare and replace it with something more consumer-centric

At long last, Republicans have started to coalesce their various one-off healthcare reform ideas from the past 6 years into a semblance of a comprehensive Obamacare repeal and replace proposal. There is much to appreciate in this proposal, which includes oft-repeated catchy taglines of, “a better way,” “patient-centered,” and my personal favorite, “backpack.” I will discuss more on the backpack later. The whole presentation, which I have linked above, can be watched in a recent AEI video.

What this proposal does not promote is my own personal preferences of a drastically reduced role for health insurance, a product that should be beaten back into its proper place for coverage of catastrophes only. The price-obfuscating impacts of coverage for every service and the price-decreasing impact that would ensue if consumers were able to see prices and outcomes more transparently by paying more directly out of their pockets is not part of this proposal. Nor does it address the supply-side needed reforms such as lifting the competition stifling (and therefore price increasing) impacts of the various regulatory mandates and rent-seeking political lobbying of regional monopoly hospitals that prevent new hospitals and clinics from opening. Finally, while it promotes Medicare and Medicaid reform, it leaves Medicare, which is mostly a middle class welfare and wealth transfer that has a naturally price inflating impact, largely intact. These are my caveats for why I don’t consider this a perfect proposal. That being said, the main themes presented certainly stanch the government takeover of healthcare bleeding and presents significant and politically feasible patient-centric reforms in place of the current construct of byzantine, dizzying, and unsustainable complex web of government controls and mandates. For this fact alone, this substantial reform proposal should be applauded and supported as a significant improvement to the status quo that just might get enough electoral support if Americans pay attention to it and can keep from being distracted by the ongoing Trump/Clinton circus. As a former boss of mine used to tell me, “don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.”

The focus is clearly on consumer choice, portability, decentralization of decisions to state and local levels, and sustainability of Medicare. It is this concept of portability that is referenced as a backpack of items that will allow consumers to move across companies and states and maintain their same coverage and access to health services. Paul Ryan opened the session indicating that Obamacare is singularly focused on quantity of people insured, while ignoring the staggering costs in the system that Obamacare caused that are, in his words, causing the act to collapse under its own weight. Not to mention the tremendous loss of individual freedom and choice that resulted from centralized decision making and mounds of mandates arising out of D.C. Allowed to blossom, these are salient points that I believe will resonate with a public that has been remarkably skeptical and loathing of Obamacare. The marketing pitch is clear – consumers, take back your choice and freedom to choose the health plans that are right for you and not dictated by a government bureaucrat. Perhaps it is more appropriate to say take it back from thousands of bureaucrats, as one Congressman indicates in the video, there are fully 159 agencies and commissions currently involved in interpreting and implementing the dictates of Obamacare.  Several congressmen, including Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-GA), Education and the Workforce Committee Chairman John Kline (R-MN), Energy & Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI), and Ways & Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-TX) took turns articulating the proposal once Ryan got off the dais. Below, I have summarized the important components of the proposal, ranked in order of my opinion on which are the most important to least important.

• Extending the health insurance tax break to individuals that businesses currently receive, and capping the amount that businesses can receive tax breaks. This concept will sever the link that causes Americans to be solely dependent on their employer for health insurance and promotes portability and accessibility of insurance. Hopefully, it results in more people taking the initiative to get insurance on their own and subsequently bargaining for higher direct compensation from their employers. The capping of tax breaks for businesses is intended to serve as a cost inflation and “over-insurance” containment provisions. Coupled with the ending of specific coverage mandates, also part of the proposal, this could go a long way towards incenting people to get more affordable coverage that makes sense for their life situation and promote innovative models such as high deductible plans, insurance coupled with wellness programs that promote actual health and wellness, and insurance that covers catastrophes only complemented with health savings accounts. These forces could make a major dent in insurance cost inflation and concomitantly overall health cost inflation.
• Free up insurance purchasing across state lines – this simple and sensible act will drive up competition and will do much more to drive consumer choice and put downward pressure on prices than the continually failing exchanges and insurance co-ops (most of which have declared bankruptcy by now) could ever do, even though that was their ostensible original purpose. The challenge is that it is impossible to drive choice and cost containment when you also force standardized minimum levels of coverage and mandated cross-subsidization of high risk individuals.
• Promotion of Health Savings Accounts – Provisions of Obamacare amazingly and wrong headedly penalize HSAs through the tax codes. This proposal would wisely end those disincentives and work to actively promote their use. HSAs are popular despite their government created disadvantages.. Furthermore, usage of HSAs promotes pricing transparency and healthcare service usage portability and flexibility.
• Medicare Reform – The proposal kills off the unpopular and unaccountable Independent Payment Advisory Board and promotes consumer choice through expansion of the popular Medicare Advantage Program.
• Provide state block grants for Medicaid – this will provide greater flexibility at the state level to craft cost saving programs at the localized level.
• Provide for ability of Small Business Group Purchasing Associations – the proposal would allow for small businesses to band together for group purchasing of insurance coverage. While I prefer a high degree of an individualized market(which hopefully the tax breaks to consumers will promote), the fact is that most employees now expect and HR departments like to offer health insurance as a hiring incentive. Allowing small businesses to band together and to receive the same tax incentives as larger businesses will promote further consumer access with the nice boon to small business employment. Currently, Obamacare punishes small businesses through a web of complex rules that force them to either cover employees on increasingly expensive and bloated plans or pay a tax penalty per employee that they do not cover.
• Protection of Pre-Existing conditions coupled with state incentives to create risk pools. While I would submit that a free-market system that promoted insurance for catastrophic conditions only would solve for this without the need for regulatory enforcement, this provision that is currently part of Obamacare is one of the few things that is actually politically popular. Thus, it is important from a politically feasible standpoint to keep it. One way of potentially holding down cross-subsidization amongst premiums and spiking premium costs for the average holder is to also create risk pools for certain conditions as a backstop to insurance coverage. The concept of risk pools is also promoted in the proposal.

These are simply the highlights. I will need to dig into the documented details of the plan to provide additional thoughts, but I certainly appreciate the direction this is heading.