Under Walker’s plan, Obamacare would be repealed in its entirety.
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MINNEAPOLIS (AP) – Republican presidential candidate Scott Walker’s plan for replacing President Barack Obama’s signature health care law does not say how many people would have health insurance coverage under his idea.
However, the paper reported, Walker’s plan “does not include cost figures or an estimate of the number of people who would be covered, making it almost impossible to compare with current law”.
Specifics from the Journal: Walker would provide tax credits to everyone without employer-sponsored health coverage. Influential conservative policy wonk Yuval Levin wrote in National Review that Walker’s plan is “the most substantively and politically serious conservative health care reform we have yet seen from a presidential candidate.”‘The gentleman from Louisiana protesteth too much’.
“On my first day as president, I will send legislation to the Congress that will repeal Obamacare entirely and replace it in a way that puts patients and their families back in charge of their health care – not the federal government”, Walker said at the Cass Screw Machine Products Company in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota.
Walker’s full health care proposal can be found here.
“The exchange that Gov. Dayton put together is one of the worst in the country, so we wanted to come here to point out the fact that we have a great repeal-and-replace plan”, he said. The amount would range from $3,000 in credits for those aged 50 to 64 and scale down to $900 for those age 17 and under, and go to those without health insurance from their jobs.
The Walker proposal, the first major policy rollout from his campaign, calls for “capped allotments” to states for some parts of Medicaid while allowing acute care payments to continue uncapped.
A centerpiece of his plan is to provide age-based refundable tax credits for people who lack employer-provided coverage.
The Walker health care plan does carry one significant echo of the Obama law: protecting people with pre-existing conditions from a loss of coverage or “huge premium spikes when they get sick”.
Consumers could also shop for insurance across state lines, among other changes from what is allowed under the Affordable Care Act, which Walker vowed to repeal. He’s unlikely to have discretionary income to fund a tax-advantaged health account and would not benefit from the exclusion from taxable income since he already owes no income taxes. At multiple events in New Hampshire on Wednesday he reminded crowds of his fights with Wisconsin’s unions and his survival of a 2012 recall election. Going after Obamacare is not really bold in my opinion unless you really have a plan that works for the people.
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Both Walker and other GOP hopefuls have based their political campaign on promises to repel the health care law on the first day in the White House office. He would deal with preexisting conditions by broader use of state high-risk pools, which in practice have proved to be extremely expensive. With out-of-pocket costs capped at a sky-high $6,600 per person, many respondents say their cost-sharing burden may as well be $600,000, it’s so unlikely they will be able to pay it.
