United States President Donald Trump and the Republicans are having a difficult time with the healthcare file. For the time being, it looks like it is impossible for Trump and the GOP to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA), otherwise colloquially known as Obamacare.
Why? Because the Republicans are divided as to what to replace it with. Ostensibly, Trump and GOP leaders like certain parts of Obamacare, while some Republicans, like Kentucky Senator Rand Paul simply wants to get rid of it.
Indeed, the Republicans don’t have to replace it with anything and can allow the free market to handle medical care (SEE: A message for Donald Trump – this is the healthcare system to adopt). But if the Congress wants to do something then they can simply vote for Alabama Republican Congressman Mo Brooks’s recent legislation: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or otherwise known as the Obamacare Repeal Act.
Here is the wording of the proposed bill:
“Effective as of Dec. 31, 2017, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is repealed, and the provisions of law amended or repealed by such Act are restored or revived as if such Act had not been enacted.”
Done! A one-sentence repeal without anything else. This is something that the president and the likes of Paul Ryan should champion instead of Obamacare 2.0 that will be worse.
Brooks also had some strong words for his fellow Republicans.
“If the American people want to repeal Obamacare, this is their last, best chance during the 115th Congress,” he said. “At a minimum, the discharge petition will, like the sun burning away the fog, show American voters who really wants to repeal Obamacare and who merely acts that way during election time.”
Unfortunately, Brooks is still someone who wants the government to meddle in healthcare.
“What we should be doing is implementing cost containment measures. We should be repealing the parts of Obamacare that have forced these skyrocketing premiums on struggling American families, rather than keep them in this new bill,” he said.
“In addition to that, we should interject new provisions that will force competition into the marketplace. By way of example, we should be forcing interstate health insurance competition that, in turn, will force lower insurance prices, as health insurance companies from around the country compete for a customer base. We should be repealing antitrust exemptions that suppress competition, that create oligopolies and monopolies that, in turn, drive up healthcare costs.”
Although the repeal is fantastic, Brooks’s cost containment suggestion is terrible.
–AM
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