Leave Obamacare alone

Just let it crash and burn on its own. That is at least preferable to the GOP proposal to place it under new ownership being pushed by Paul Ryan and Donald Trump.

The Trump supporters who railed against the ‘GOPe’ should be angrier than the rest of us, since the Art of the Trumpcare Deal strongly suggests the GOPe is still in charge.

Actually, following the script of redefining subsidies into tax credits and claiming there’s a real difference, maybe we should rename GOPe. Call it GOPino. Actually, it’s arguable that there is nothing significant left of the GOP, anyway.

Here’s a partial list from Jeffrey Tucker of things health care reform should accomplish. Not one of them is in the GOPino proposal.

1. Government should not be determining what is or must be insured. That should be up to the consumers to decide.
2. Government should not interfere in contractual relationships between providers and purchasers of insurance, whether individuals or businesses.
3. Prices for medical services need to be completely decontrolled, and the convoluted market-rigging by a conspiracy of providers, insurers, and government welfare bureaucracies must be ended.
4. Government should not mandate coverage by employers or privilege employer-provided coverage over individually purchased coverage. Third-party payment should be an option.
5. Government should not mandate that insurers accept all comers at the same price; that system makes a mockery of the whole idea of insurance itself.
6. Discrimination for “pre-existing conditions” should not be a criminal act but rather a rational consideration for determining premiums.
7. Government should not restrict who gets to try their hand at providing insurance; entry and exit need to be competitive too.
8. Government should never force anyone to pay for a service that he or she does not want. You say coverage is a human right? It’s a human right for a person to refuse coverage.
9. If you want to get serious about fixing the system, the byzantine pharmaceutical system has to go. Again, let the consumers decide, and, while we are at it, there should be complete free trade in medicine.
10. The 100-year old medical credential monopoly that has so severely restricted entry into the profession should be dismantled. The market is fully capable of assuring quality, and remember too that there is not one definition of quality.

Those are all fixes to problems big government created. Rather than address that, Trump and Ryan are saying if we don’t pass Trumpcare it will hurt Republicans. Ryan:

“I do believe that [2018 will be a “bloodbath” for Republicans] if we don’t keep our word to the people who sent us here, yeah,” Ryan told CBS News’s “Face the Nation,” when asked if he agreed with Trump’s reported comments about the 2018 midterm elections.

Who cares?

I do believe he’s right, but not in the way he thinks. This only makes sense in a Clintonian world where the definitions of “keep” and “word” depend on the meaning of the word “is.”

Trump’s Voters Have Been Betrayed on Healthcare, Bigly.

So has everyone else.