In their first major move since taking power in the House, Republicans yesterday voted to preserve the planet’s most wasteful health care system, and one of its most inequitable.
While voting to repeal President Obama’s health reform, they offered nothing in its place.
Yes, Republicans have pressed for some useful measures, like tort reform. But they have never offered a plausible plan to expand coverage to the army of working families who can’t afford insurance.
Without solving that problem, it’s impossible to solve the rest. Because the nearly 50 million uninsured will continue to land in hospital emergency rooms when illness strikes, driving up costs for everyone. Insurers will continue to play their obnoxious games to deny coverage to those who need it most. And American companies will continue to struggle with enormous health care costs as they compete with foreign firms that bear no such burden.
Republicans were encouraged by polls showing a plurality of Americans opposing the health care reform. But they’d better be careful — some provisions are popular and cannot survive on their own.
Most Americans believe insurers should be forced to sell policies to those with pre-existing conditions, for example. But that can’t work without the individual mandate to buy insurance. Otherwise, people could game the system by living without insurance until they become ill, then claiming the right to buy coverage.
This repeal won’t survive in the Senate. But Republicans have a more potent backup plan to cut funding needed to implement reform. That fight could lead to a government shutdown.
If so, Republicans should be prepared to answer the question they dodged this week: What’s your solution?