Highly respected industry expert Bob Laszewski provides an ongoing review of health care policy activity and the health insurance marketplace. We have followed his takes on healthcare reform for some time and have always found them to insightful, balanced, realistic and mostly on target. And, you can count on straight talk, no bull. We were very interested in his reaction to last night’s election results.
Here’s some of what Laszewski had to say about Obamacare immediately on the heels of last night’s presidential election:
There is no doubt that Obamacare is dead……..
…….There are two routes they will consider:
- Immediate repeal and replace that can rebuild insurance reform under the Senate 51-vote budget rule. Following this route will mean that the pre-existing condition reforms, for example, would have to remain in any new law because they are not budget related and would have to stay. The individual mandate (the Supreme Court declared it a tax) could be done away with as well as all of the exchange subsidies and the Medicaid expansion because they are spending related. Just what this path would look like in detail will depend upon what Senate budget rules ultimately determine to be budget items and whether that would be enough to build a health law consistent with a Republican vision.
- Effectively repealing by using the Senate 51-vote budget rules to gut the financing of the law on a future date certain. That would be followed by the Republicans saying to the country and the Democrats that Obamacare would continue as is until that future date––Obamacare would continue to cover everyone in the exchanges and under Medicaid. But if Democrats didn’t cooperate in legislating a new health insurance law, they will argue, it will be on the head of the Democrats that people lost their coverage on the day funding ends. This course could have the effect of forcing the Congress to agree on a new bipartisan path for health insurance reform––or result in one incredible implosion of coverage if the Democrats didn’t cooperate.
Either way, Obamacare is over.”
No words minced, for sure.
You can read Bob’s entire article Obamacare: Dead Law Walking! here.