Why should conservatives support the Graham-Cassidy Obamacare fix-it bill? Here’s why…

With the Obamacare reconciliation deadline fast approaching there’s a lot of pressure on Senators to support the new Graham-Cassidy healthcare bill. Even the National Review has written an editorial this morning trying to convince Rand Paul to vote for the bill.

They essentially argue that while the bill is not a true repeal bill, it is still better than Obamacare for various reasons, of which the two biggest are the repeal of the individual mandate and the employer mandate.

It might surprise you to learn that legislative whiz kid Daniel Horowitz actually agrees with them, but not for the same reasons.

He explains below:

CR – To be clear, this bill absolutely does not fulfill the promise of repealing Obamacare. It leaves the core price-hiking regulations in place and only offers states minor flexibility to adjust some of the minor regulations. It leaves most of the tax hikes in place and leaves the Medicaid expansion and exchange subsidy funding to the states. While this sounds more conservative, the reality is that the blue states will use the funding to push even stronger government-run health care, while most Republican-run states will follow the Kasich model of perpetuating the status quo of endless government subsidies and interventions, even if funneled through the venture socialism of “private” insurance.

Prices will, therefore, not come down, for those not being subsidized. It’s debatable whether the bill may slow the crushing growth of insurance inflation. The plan certainly won’t create a climate in which new insurers could compete with the incumbent powers, because the existing lobbyists will work with unelected HHS officials and state insurance officials to carve out a statutory and subsidy regime that blocks competition.

So why should conservatives support this plan?

The one element of Obamacare that would be repealed under this plan are the requirements that individuals purchase and employers offer cartel insurance.

You might be pondering the obvious problem: By maintaining the regulations but getting rid of the mandates, less money will be pumped into the system, forcing unsubsidized rates to climb even more, a point we made in opposition to previous half-baked repeal schemes?

True, and that is the point! If we can’t repeal Obamacare, let’s allow the malignancy of Obamacare to destroy the existing model of insurance, which was never a free market to begin with. When we allow individuals and employers to exit the system, the cartel will no longer have us by the neck. You see, the more they raise their prices, the more people will just give up on insurance. Employers will drop coverage like a hot potato as well. In fact, the coverage regulations forcing insurers to cover people after they get sick for the same price works to our advantage under this scenario, because people will readily leave the system and then stick the system with the tab when they need the coverage.

In the meantime…health-sharing ministries have shown an alternative model to the existing insurance paradigm. Graham and Cassidy are wrong about prices coming down under their bill. The continued higher prices, in conjunction with allowing people to opt out, will create a market for health-sharing association plans in which groups of individuals and associations get together and pool their resources to cover catastrophic needs. The basic needs would be paid for directly by the consumer to the doctor.

This is how any market should work. This will make the consumer, not the government/insurance cartel, the actual consumer. This will spawn a revolution in price transparency and actually bring down costs by circumventing the entire insurance system.

And remember, nonprofit risk pooling associations are not governed by any state or federal regulations and by definition already cross state lines. The only thing holding them back is the individual mandate: Only five Christian ministries are currently exempt from the mandate). Watch the insurance cartel be forced to compete or die.

Such an outcome would not directly repeal Obamacare and does not exonerate people like Graham and Cassidy from their campaign betrayals, but it would make Obamacare moot because it would repeal the entire system it was built upon. Obamacare is burning itself down. We are so deep into the hellish pit of government-run health care — even before Obamacare was enacted — that we are now closer to digging out on the other side of the hole than we are to retracing our steps.

Horowitz goes on to explain more about this approach and you can read it here. But you get the basic idea, force the system kill itself by driving employers and individual buyers out of the socialistic health care market.

I certainly can’t speak for anyone else, but if my Obamacare premiums continue to rise like they have in the past (crushing growth of insurance inflation), I may be forced to dump my insurance altogether. I’m already paying $600/month for just my premium and that’s double what I was paying in 2014. The sad thing is if I dump them, I’d lose out on my two thousand dollar medication that my insurance is actually covering that keeps my psoriatic arthritis at bay. It’s a difficult place to be in to have to choose between better financial freedom and medication.

So perhaps Horowitz is right. My fear, though, is that our betters in DC will keep trying to fix Obamacare with little fixes here and there so that they keep it hanging by a thread indefinitely and push off the much needed collapse of the insurance market until too far into the future while the rest of us suffer.


Comment Policy: Please read our comment policy before making a comment. In short, please be respectful of others and do not engage in personal attacks. Otherwise we will revoke your comment privileges.