Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Phil Gramm Proposes Obamacare "Freedom Option"

Phil Gramm, the former Republican senator from Texas, writes in WSJ:
Republicans need a strategy that is easy to understand, broadly popular and difficult to oppose. It must unite Republicans and divide congressional Democrats, while empowering Republican governors and legislators to resist administration pressure. I believe that strategy is what I would call “the freedom option.” Every American should have the right to decide not to participate in ObamaCare: If you like ObamaCare and its subsidies, you can keep it. If you don’t, you are free to buy the health insurance that fits your needs.

The freedom option would fulfill the commitment the president made over and over again about ObamaCare: If you like your health insurance you can keep it. If Republicans crafted a simple bill that guarantees the right of individuals and businesses to opt out of ObamaCare, buy the health insurance they choose from any willing seller (with risk pools completely separate from ObamaCare), millions of Americans would rejoice and exercise this freedom. Such a proposal would be easy for Republicans to articulate and defend. And it would be very difficult for Democrats to attack...Of all potential Republican proposals, the freedom option seems the most likely to garner the six Democratic votes in the Senate needed to break a filibuster, pass the bill and put it on the president’s desk. If the freedom option were combined with a provision that allowed federal-exchange subsidies or state actions setting up state exchanges, existing providers and recipients of subsidies would not be threatened.

The opposition would come solely from those who understand that ObamaCare is built on coercion—and that unless young, healthy Americans are forced into the program to be exploited with above-market insurance rates, the subsidies will prove unaffordable. That will be an exceedingly difficult case to make to the public.

By extinguishing coercion, the freedom option would put ObamaCare on the path to extinction. Without the ability to exploit the young and healthy, the Affordable Care Act will collapse under its own funding weight, all but guaranteeing a 2017 revision of the entire law.
Putting Obamacare on the path to extinction is a very good thing and I like Gramm's proposal for that reason, but why is he talking about a revision in 2017?  There is no legitimate reason for government to be involved in the healthcare sector at all.

 --RW

6 comments:

  1. ANY alleged contract (agreement) can be vacated for fraud, threat, duress, coercion, mistake, illegality, immorality, impossibility insanity or minority of age. If you don't believe that statement of facts, then give some proof that anyone has an actual obligation to endure the fraud of another.

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  2. One suspects Gramm's reference to a 2017 revision is that he objects not to government control of healthcare, but that the ACA was written to favor Democratic constituencies.

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  3. Nice use of the word, "exploited." Republican putting the law into terms the liberals will understand. Credit where credit is due.

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  4. Nice use of the word, "exploited." Republican putting the law into terms the liberals will understand. Credit where credit is due.

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  5. Everyone can talk tough.
    As you submit your Health Insurance info to the IRS this year, realize that you are actually an effing wimp.
    To avoid a paltry fine, you doom a generation.
    Lick away.
    I wrote "stool samples available upon request".
    Hoist the flag.

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  6. How about a "freedom option" for everything the government does?

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