Republicans Claim They Have a Healthcare Plan. But They Won’t Tell You What’s in It
Republicans appear determined to destroy the Affordable Care Act, but what will go in its place? It’s a question the party has struggled to answer since the ACA passed. Remember Trump’s first term promise to “repeal and replace” Obamacare that never came to fruition?
Since the government shut down a month ago, the party has refused to publicly discuss a plan, even as ACA subsidies expire at the end of the year, forcing Americans to pay astronomically higher monthly premiums. In New Jersey, some premiums will rise by more than 175 percent. One family’s premiums will spike 300 percent. Across the board, premiums are expected to increase by an average of 26 percent for a typical ACA plan, a recent KFF analysis revealed.
The Republicans’ so-called health care plans are so secret, in fact, they won’t share them with members of their own party. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who called out House Speaker Mike Johnson last week for not disclosing the party’s plans during a GOP conference call, said during an appearance on Friday’s Real Time with Bill Maher: “Mike Johnson, for a month now, cannot give me a single policy idea.”
She said at another point during the show, “I’m waiting for the [healthcare] plan. I haven’t seen it yet.”
(In true MTG style, she also admitted to believing that aliens are space demons, saying, “That’s what makes sense in my worldview.”)
Confronted with Greene’s criticism on Fox News Sunday, Johnson said, “I don’t know what to say about that. That’s absurd. Obviously, we’re not gonna be on a conference call explaining all of our plans and strategies for healthcare reform because they’re leaked in real time, literally… They’re supposed to be private, but they’re not.”
Johnson then claimed that Greene can visit his office “any day at any hour” and he will “lay out everything for her.” He then referenced a 2019 Republican Study Committee plan that proposed changes to healthcare, including re-establishing high-risk pools.
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Sen. John Kennedy floated the idea of high-risk pools in an interview on CNN last week.
“There are a number of ideas being batted around association health plans,” the Republican senator from Louisiana said, adding, “bringing back high risk pools, which have been outlawed under the Affordable Care Act.”
These types of pools existed before the ACA banned them, and they were plagued with issues. Premiums in these pools were often twice the rate that lower risk people paid, they often excluded coverage for pre-existing conditions for the first 6-12 months, many had a lifetime coverage limit, and numerous states restricted how many people could join their pool, according to KFF.
Bringing back high-risk pools will only bring back the problems they caused.
Perhaps GOP Rep. Jeff Van Drew best summarized the state of the party’s plans: “It is politically stupid. It does not make sense to come up with no plan dealing with health care… The plan is to come up with something better.”
So the plan is to have a plan — eventually. But, Van Drew warned, don’t expect to see that plan anytime soon.
“That’s going to take a good part of the year, to have something substantive and real that works,” he said.
In the meantime, without a resolution to the shutdown that includes a continuation of the ACA subsidies, millions of Americans will suffer from astronomically higher premiums. All because the Republicans are set on destroying Obamacare, alongside other Democratic policy initiatives. Meanwhile, they continue to enjoy their cushy government health benefits.
As the president put it last month, “We’re closing up programs that are Democrat programs that we were opposed to… and they’re never going to come back in many cases.”