Repeal and delay doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as repeal and replace, but that appears to be where we are on health care.
After seven years of Republicans’ campaigning on overhauling Obamacare, the current Senate health care plan is dead on arrival. The reality is, as Vice President Pence put it, “inaction is not an option.” Given the current crumbling state of our health care system, action is indeed needed — but it must be the right action, or there will be an election reckoning in 2018.
On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called for a repeal of Obamacare and set a two year deadline on replacement. This was not the right action: it is a tough sell and an uphill battle that would require both Republican and Democratic support. Already three Republican senators responded that they would oppose that procedural step as written.
The truth is, Senate leadership needs to start fresh and work with conservative and moderate Republicans, Senate Democrats and state governors to provide lower cost and greater access to health care.
And lower premiums are a must in any new legislation. Access without affordability will not work — if you walk into a Lamborghini showroom and can’t afford to buy the car, you really don’t have access to a sports car.
McConnell has urged Democrats to “consider what they’re celebrating” with the current health care setback, because “the American people are hurting.”
He’s right about that: I have traveled this country on presidential campaigns and heard personal stories of health care struggles under Obamacare. People want and deserve change; they are frustrated with the partisan gridlock. As Pence said, “Congress needs to do their job now.”
But posturing Democrats have given up on any attempt at fixing the broken system. Last month Hillary Clinton labeled the Republican Party “the death party,” Senator Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, referred to a policy that puts money back in taxpayers’ pockets as “blood money,” and one Hollywood director even went so far as to call McConnell and President Trump terrorists. This rhetoric shows how out of touch Democrats are with the failure of the current health care system.
Furthermore, one third of US counties currently have access to just one insurer on the government-run exchanges, and some areas of the country don’t have a single provider. Insurers are leaving the markets at a breakneck pace. How do you provide affordable health insurance when the plans simply don’t exist?
Anthem recently announced it would leave the marketplace in Ohio in 2018, and Blue Cross Blue Shield said it would pull out of Missouri. Meanwhile, Senators Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, have chosen to sit on their hands, heckling from the sidelines, instead of opting for change that will help their very constituents.
Rather than acknowledge the devastating impact Obamacare is having on Americans across the country, Democrats have created an environment in Washington that has made it nearly impossible to get anything done.
Republicans saw the writing on the wall when Obamacare was passed in 2010. They knew it wouldn’t work; that’s why they campaigned for seven years on the promise that they would repeal and replace President Barack Obama’s hallmark legislation.
This promise motivated millions of voters across the country to give Republicans control of Washington to fix the disaster Obamacare caused. It’s now their responsibility to deliver meaningful legislation that will lead to lower cost and higher quality healthcare.
All options are still on the table, and it is incumbent on Republicans and Democrats together to deliver the relief that the American people so desperately need. If their voices are not heard now on health care, they will be heard in the midterm elections.
