Cantor: We'll Be Including The Most Popular Basic Bits of ObamaCare When We Propose Our New Health Care Reform

I have dreaded posting this because I know it will be bait for me to get into arguments with people, which I just don't want to do. So I won't.

I'll just note my belief that the odds of defeating ObamaCare politically will go up significantly if there's some kind of more-attractive but less-intrusive replacement on the horizon. Conservatives have seized, kind of oddly, on ObamaCare's keep-kids-on-your-insurance-'till-they're-26 provision, but I think it's too popular to get rid of, and trying to get rid of it will threaten the more important goal of getting rid of socialized medicine.

The other part is also popular -- no barring coverage for those with pre-existing conditions -- but it's also extremely costly and without any good way to implement it. The problem is, of course, that you can't have free riders skipping insurance all their lives until the day they're diagnosed with a costly illness, then signing up and paying what healthy people pay.

I don't know how you get around this -- you either have to force people to buy insurance, which is of course a no-go (and might in fact get ObamaCare struck down by the courts), or you... no idea. You just subsidize their game-the-system behavior.

You could make people pay very high premiums indeed if they do this, penalizing the game-the-system types, but in the end, you can't penalize them enough to make this an unattractive proposition.

Politico Spins: Politico wrote its article suggesting that parts of ObamaCare would be "retained," according Eric Cantor. I always knew that was false-- a false way to put it. Cantor wants to replace ObamaCare, repeal it, then propose a new reform; Politico tries to suggest that ObamaCare would be "retained." No, no.

Anyway, I knew Politico was lying about that part of it from the get-go and declined to follow their spin. However, Eric Cantor is proposing that two popular parts of ObamaCare be part of the replacement bill; that part's true.

Politico updated to note its initial lie:

Editor's note: This article was changed at 1:57 p.m.. The Hill incorrectly reported in the initial version that Cantor wants to keep certain provisions of the healthcare law intact. The article was revised to emphasize that Cantor and House Republicans are pursuing a full repeal of healthcare reform while addressing issues in the law, such as pre-existing conditions and allowing young people to stay on their parents' insurance plan, in their replacement bill. Both provisions are in current law, but Republicans would deal with them differently than Democrats did in the bill that passed earlier this year.

I changed a word in my own headline to further distance myself from Politico's spin.

Honestly, on this one, I wasn't fooled. I just sort of assumed Politico was deliberately distorting Cantor's words and read past that.

posted by Ace at 05:01 PM

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