Today, Paul Ryan and a committee composed of Republicans unveiled a health plan that they are proposing to replace the Affordable Care Act (A.K.A. Obamacare). They provided a copy of the proposed bill online and I read the main features that it's touting. It is encouraging to note that they have decided to keep certain provisions from Obamacare that has proved vital to a lot of people such as preventing insurance companies from denying individuals with pre-existing conditions and not reinstating lifetime caps.
The one question that has been gnawing at my brain after I have read the key provisions is, "How is this going to be paid for?" Obama's vision was to encourage all the young and healthy individuals to sign up for insurance to essentially help subsidize the needs of those who are sickly and who can't afford to pay for health insurance. Obamacare was able to do this through the individual and employer mandates (i.e., tax penalties for individuals who don't sign up and companies with more than 50 employees who don't provide insurance). This proposed bill, known as the American Health Care Act (AHCA), is getting rid of these mandates. It is also promising lower premiums. So again, how is this plan going to be paid for?
It is a fact that premiums under Obamacare have increased in the past year and that has emboldened its early critics. There is no question that there are some aspects of this current bill that needs to be fixed and I was hoping that this congress would be able to do that. A cursory inspection of the AHCA does not give me the confidence that it will. To be fair, it's too early in its inception to completely dismiss it and I hope that these questions of funding would be cleared up and the lingering possibility of it adding to our deficit would be addressed.
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