By David Blatt
BridgeTower Media Newswires
After seven years of obsessive effort, the Republican Party's efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, came to a crashing defeat last month in a series of Senate votes that failed to gain a majority.
There are many explanations for the repeal effort's failure, from divisions within the Republican Party to the Senate's obscure rules to the unhelpful interventions of a distracted and unpopular president. But the ultimate obstacle Republicans faced is that every one of their proposals whether straight repeal, repeal and replace, skinny repeal or something else would have stripped away hard-won health care benefits and caused harm to tens of millions of Americans.
For all its imperfections, the Affordable Care Act has brought about meaningful and far-ranging improvements in health insurance.
It has guaranteed coverage for those with pre-existing conditions who previously were denied care for their chronic health problems. It has ended annual and lifetime benefit caps and allowed young adults to remain on their parents' plans. It has provided large subsidies to buy insurance for those without access to employer-based plans and ensured that plans provide the full range of health benefits that people may need.
In most states, though not in Oklahoma, it expanded the Medicaid program to adults with incomes below the poverty level. As a result, the nation's uninsured rate has fallen to historic lows.
All the repeal proposals threatened these important gains. The specifics varied, but every proposal was projected to lead to a loss of health insurance for anywhere from 15 million to 32 million Americans. Premiums would have soared by thousands of dollars, hitting older and lower-income individuals most harshly.
Most proposals not only ended the Medicaid expansion but imposed deep cuts in federal funding for basic Medicaid, threatening care for vulnerable children, seniors, and people with disabilities. Health care providers, insurance companies, and governors added their voices to those of fearful individuals and families in opposition to Republican repeal proposals.
Ultimately, enough senators were responsive to their constituents to scuttle repeal. As West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito stated at one point, "I did not come to Washington to hurt people."
It's time for Republicans to finally admit that there is no feasible path to repeal and instead get to work building on the success of the Affordable Care Act while fixing its flaws.
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David Blatt is executive director of the Oklahoma Policy Institute, http://okpolicy.org.
Published: Fri, Aug 11, 2017
