“We allow people to buy health insurance anywhere, in any state out there”. And just as Obama raced to reelection standing up against Mitt Romney’s pledge to repeal Obamacare, the third Republican presidential candidate in a row will lose in no small part because they don’t get that Americans understand in a very personal way what access to affordable health coverage means for their families.
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“I’m willing to stand up against anyone, including members of my own party”, Walker said at Cass Screw Machine Products in suburban Minneapolis.
“Republicans have been in charge of both houses of Congress since January and there still isn’t a bill on the president’s desk to repeal Obamacare”, Walker said. That’s a tall order for a plan that eliminates the $1 trillion in largely upper-income taxes imposed by the health law, and in a Congress run by anti-spending Republicans. One of his opponents, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, presented a detailed proposal in 2014. U.S. Senators Marco Rubio and Rand Paul are also considered contenders among the Minnesota’s Republican activists.
“If you allow the sale of insurance across state lines with no minimum federal rules, insurers would gravitate to states with little regulation”, said Larry Levitt, a health policy expert with the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.
Republican politicians have been proposing some combination of these policies since the 2008 election, when John McCain countered Barack Obama’s health care platform with the same ideas. It repeals Obamacare’s cuts to Medicare without replacing them. “We’re talking about several years, even if the law based on this plan were to pass”.
Geoffrey Skelley of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics said Walker’s timing suggests he is motivated by recent polling showing Walker’s support among Republicans falling.
While Walker leaves many questions unanswered about how he would pay for his plan, he says he would base sliding-scale tax credits on age, rather than income. “The similarities end there”, said Topher Spiro, a former Capitol Hill senior aide who helped lawmakers write Obamacare. “We don’t like the brash East Coast mentality – not to say that’s not going to win“. Plans that include health savings accounts would be encouraged with additional federal dollars. Nor does it have any concrete proposals to reduce the cost of health care.
The Affordable Care Act, signed into law in 2010, created a series of benefits to make obtaining insurance easier.
Under Walker’s plan, Obamacare would be repealed in its entirety.
It’s a bit closer when it comes to public polling, with the newspaper noting that among Republican candidates, 19 percent of those polled in Minnesota said they would select Walker, putting him only 1 percent ahead of Trump. He needs a minimum of 60 votes from the Senate- a number considered to be unattainable in 2016. Those who qualify receive a subsidy to offset the costs.
Walker defended the plan and brushed off Jindal’s calls for the two to have a debate on health care policy. People with pre-existing conditions would be covered as long as they maintain continuous coverage. The credits range from $900 to $3,000 based on an individual’s age. As much as I’d like to believe that, I actually assume the opposite – Walker and Rubio want credit for having some shadow of an idea about a major national issue, but they rolled out their health care plans in mid-August, when the political world’s attention was elsewhere, probably hoping few would look closely at their ridiculous proposals.
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“There’s a lot in here that borrows from the ACA but renames it something else”, Friedsam said. So naturally he want to, as he said today, “return control to the states”.
