So few people have learned of the extensive work done by conservatives over the past couple of decades — and especially in recent years — on the topic of health care reform. Why don’t more people know? Because conservatives are great at producing policy proposals — and not great at fighting the information war.
Here is the Galen Institute’s Grace-Marie Turner writing at The American Conservative:
Republicans aim to create a flexible, consumer-friendly system.
Despite assertions to the contrary from the media and the left, Republicans do have a plan for health reform—but it will not be another 2,000-page behemoth attempting to re-engineer our health sector from the top down, with a conservative twist.
Conservatives have seen from the failed experiment with Obamacare the hubris of believing politicians can write enough laws and regulations to control one-sixth of the American economy. It does not work, and they do not plan to repeat the liberals’ blunder.
Instead, they will replace this failed health law through a step-by-step enactment of a market-friendly reform that provides a safety net for those currently on the program, gives states more authority to oversee their health-insurance markets, and provides states with revenues to help those who have difficulty purchasing or affording health insurance. They also will begin the desperately needed process of modernizing the Medicaid program to provide access to care instead of an often-useless insurance card.
Congress is working to create a lifeboat and a bridge with its repeal-and-replace agenda. The replacement measures will protect the people who are on Obamacare now so they don’t lose their coverage again, and they will build a bridge to new coverage that will protect others from the damage that the law has done to their pocketbooks and the quality of their medical coverage.
“We want to do this at the same time, and in some cases in the same bill,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said during a town hall this month sponsored by CNN. “So we want to advance repealing this law with its replacement at the same time.”
But they must begin with repeal. Consumer-friendly reform policies cannot be built on top of the Obamacare wreckage.
Read more: The American Conservative
Image credit: The Pioneer Institute / Photo of Grace-Marie Turner.
