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jrpowell's avatar

Obama(romney)Care sucks. Since the Republicans want to repeal it what is their replacement?

Asked by jrpowell (40562points) July 1st, 2012

Rubio was on The Daily Show and blasted the ACA and when prompted for a solution his only one was repeal the ACA.

So, what is this magical Republican plan that I hear so much about but have never seen?

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15 Answers

JLeslie's avatar

Honestly, I don’t think they need a replacement, they can just want to get rid of it. Republican Presidents since I have been alive don’t seem to touch the health care issue for the masses, they just leave it to the free market. Bush did do some stuff with medicare, but that is a government run program already.

cazzie's avatar

Romney talks about doing everything that is in that bill EXCEPT for the part of how to pay for it. Everybody hates that part, (tax rise), but how else does it get paid for?

JLeslie's avatar

@cazzie I have not been following politics much, but I had thought Romnet talks mostly about each state getting to do whatever they want, and not so much about doing everything in Obamacare except how to pay for it. Are you saying he has said he wants to continue certain parts of obamacare at a federal level?

cazzie's avatar

@JLeslie the quotes I saw, he said, ‘Yes, we need. blah blah blah blah’ which are current components in the Affordable Care Act. I think he would like to implement the popular parts and let the States work out how to pay for it. It is what he did in Mass, isn’t it?

JLeslie's avatar

@cazzie Well, Romney argues it doesn’t matter what he did for Mass, he doesn’t agree with the fed dictating what needs to be done. So, I find it interesting that you heard him say that. I do wonder if your interpretation is different than his intention or how republicans are understanding/hearing what he said. I saw Bobby Jindal on Meet The Press, he is being considered for VP supposedly, and he persisted on saying states will get it right on their own. One of the people on the panel threw out a stat that over 20% of TX children are not covered by health insurance, and Jindal said in his state of LA 90 something percent (high 90’s) of children are covered. So, it seems to me the Republican line is still leave it all up to the states. Of course, those are just stats for children. Many states offer a government option for children.

Romney may very well have meant what you think, I just find it surprising if he has gone that route.

cazzie's avatar

There are federal mandates for many things. Drinking age, car safety, education, food safety, air and water quality. Perhaps the federal government needs to say ‘Hey, States, get your shit together over caring for the health of your citizens and reach these goals, or you loose… say… all your tax, pork subsidies.

If the States rights people keep yelling about ‘it is a State issue’, (like Arizona creating it’s very own foreign policy) they may as well call themselves the ‘American States Union, like the European Union, but even more loosely united, where all they have in common, really is their currency. There will be nothing ‘United’ about the States at all. (except it’s mindless rhetoric, perhaps) But I am guessing that won’t happen.

dabbler's avatar

The argument of most of the people objecting to the Affordable Care Act mostly boils down to this.

bkcunningham's avatar

@johnpowell, I watched the video. Rubio didn’t blast Obamacare in his discussion with Stewart. Regarding his plan on healthcare reform, Rubio said he has made speeches about his ideas and it never got coverage. He and Stewart even discussed single-payer. I honestly wish everyone would watch the video you posted. At least the portion with Rubio. He is sharp. Thanks for posting, @johnpowell.

Also, regarding Rubio’s solution to healthcare, if you go to his website there is a synopsis that says: To start lowering health care costs and begin to reclaim our country, Senator Rubio believes we need to take simple, common sense actions, including allowing individuals to purchase health insurance across state lines, encouraging small businesses to band together to form Association Health Plans, giving individuals the same tax breaks given to businesses, incentivizing the use of electronic medical records; giving people tools to make cost-conscious decisions, increasing the number of community health centers, incentivizing state medical malpractice reform, enhancing Health Savings Accounts, pursuing medical malpractice reform and adopting a sensible program to cover those with pre-existing conditions.

SuperMouse's avatar

I found this on the GOP’s website. My first problem is that they insist on calling this a “job destroying” bill. I have a hard time understanding how it will destroy jobs. It is a pretty bare-bones description of what they want to use to replace president Obama’s healthcare plan. Near as I can tell, while some of their ideas makes sense (such as not denying coverage for preexisting conditions), it will do nothing to help someone like me be able to afford medical insurance.

JLeslie's avatar

@cazzie I call it the Confederate States of America, but maybe yours is more comtemporary.

wundayatta's avatar

Job destroying? Hah! You can’t pump that much money into a sector of the economy without driving up the demand for health services and dramatically increasing the need for health care employees.

Then their plan? Allowing folks to buy plans in other states? That won’t help unless you allow people to buy plans that with lower minimum coverages. If you do that, you don’t help, because the health insurance plans don’t cover much.

Malpractice reform? Won’t save much money. Malpractice is not a bit cost component in health care. Health savings account? Merely a tax gimmick. It changes nothing about how people consume health care. Pre-existing conditions? No mention of how it will be paid for.

Getting rid of abortions? A, it won’t save much money and B, it hurts women. It’s a destructive policy.

The Republican plan is a joke. It doesn’t deserve to be called a plan. It’s just there so they can say they have something, even though it does worse than nothing.

The Republicans have no ideas for health care because they have boxed themselves into a corner. They can have no ideas about health care because the only thing that will work is single-payer.

They say Americans will try everything else before they try what works. The paucity of elements in the Republican plan shows we are damn near out of everything else. After Obamacare, the only reasonable next step is single-payer. Of course, I won’t hold my breath on that. Republican have a genius for persuading the American public to do the stupidest thing possible.

Paradox25's avatar

They don’t, unless you consider the I’ve gotten mine so tough shit if you didn’t get yours argument an alternative.

augustlan's avatar

Relevant. The whole clip is excellent, but scroll to 2:20 for Romney’s ‘plan’.

MadMadMax's avatar

@JLeslie Nixion wanted a nationalized health insurance program.

Nixon’s health care plan in his own words:
http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/stories/2009/september/03/nixon-proposal.aspx

MadMadMax's avatar

• Harry Truman. On Nov. 19, 1945, Truman wrote a message to Congress saying that “the health of American children, like their education, should be recognized as a definite public responsibility.” According to the Truman Library, “the most controversial aspect of the plan was the proposed national health insurance plan.” It called for “the creation of a national health insurance fund to be run by the federal government. This fund would be open to all Americans, but would remain optional. Participants would pay monthly fees into the plan, which would cover the cost of any and all medical expenses that arose in a time of need. The government would pay for the cost of services rendered by any doctor who chose to join the program.”

The American Medical Association attacked the plan, characterizing the bill as “socialized medicine.” Truman ultimately abandoned the effort after the outbreak of the Korean War

• Richard Nixon. In 1971 and 1974, Nixon offered separate proposals to expand health insurance to all, or nearly all, Americans. Generally speaking, they involved employer mandates to provide health insurance, supplemented by subsidies for poorer Americans.

“I shall propose a sweeping new program that will assure comprehensive health-insurance protection to millions of Americans who cannot now obtain it or afford it, with vastly improved protection against catastrophic illnesses,” he said in 1974.

The 1974 effort gained some traction in Congress but faltered as Nixon became consumed by scandal.

“Had it not been for his destruction as a result of the Watergate affair, legislation might well have passed during his presidency,” said Princeton University health care historian Paul Starr, the author of Remedy and Reaction: The Peculiar American Struggle over Health Care Reform.

• Bill Clinton. In 1993 and 1994, Clinton—in a process spearheaded by First Lady Hillary Clinton—sought to pass a major overhaul of the health care system that would have aimed for universal coverage. Even though the Democrats controlled Congress at the time, the plan did not win enactment.

So that’s an easy three. It isn’t much of a stretch to get a fourth:

• Lyndon Johnson. Technically, Johnson never sought full universal health care. But it seems churlish to deny inclusion on this list to the man who signed Medicare and Medicaid into law. They aren’t universal care for everybody, but they are universal care for large subsets of the population.

You can add a few more if you lower the bar a bit.

• John F. Kennedy. Kennedy voiced strong support for legislation that would ultimately become Medicare. On May 20, 1962, he held a televised rally to push the proposal at a packed Madison Square Garden in New York City. (The American Journal of Public Health later noted that hours later, the AMA rented the empty hall to film a rebuttal by its president, without showing the empty seats.) But he died before the legislation could come to fruition.)

• Gerald Ford. Ford endorsed Nixon’s second proposal, but it didn’t get far on his brief watch.

• Jimmy Carter. Carter proposed “a step-by-step plan to achieve universal coverage,” Starr said. “It came relatively late in his first term, and it was too weak to satisfy (Democratic Sen.) Ted Kennedy and many other Democrats.” Carter’s efforts were “halfhearted,” said Brown University political scientist James Morone, co-author of The Heart of Power: Health and Politics in the Oval Office from Roosevelt to Bush.

You can actually add a couple more if you bend Castro’s definition even further.

• Theodore Roosevelt. He did endorse the idea of expanding health insurance to all, but only as as a presidential candidate for the Bull Moose Party in 1912, not during his earlier term in the White House.

• Franklin D. Roosevelt. In his State of the Union address in 1943, Roosevelt called for a social insurance system that would extend “from the cradle to the grave,” and he was preparing a program and a speech on national health insurance at the time of his death. In the midst of World War II, Roosevelt never pursued it in earnest, but Truman took up the mantle instead

• Dwight Eisenhower. Eisenhower reacted to Democratic proposals for single-payer health care by proposing an expansion of care within the model of private-sector medicine. Eisenhower’s approach was to make permanent the tax break for employer-sponsored health coverage (which remains today) in order to encourage as many Americans as possible to get covered through their workplace. For those who were not employed, Eisenhower proposed that the government “reinsure” private insurance companies to encourage them to add less profitable populations to their coverage rolls.

While Morone calls the Eisenhower plan relatively “timid,” it nonetheless sparked the AMA’s opposition, which helped kill it in Congress.

The remaining Republican presidents did act to expand health coverage in certain ways, but none of our experts thought they met Castro’s definition of pushing for universal health care.

• Ronald Reagan signed the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, which requires hospitals to serve patients in urgent need, and the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, or COBRA, which allows individuals to keep paying for coverage if they lose their insurance. In addition, with almost no support from his own cabinet, Reagan added catastrophic care to Medicare toward the end of his presidency, though the provision was later repealed.

• George H.W. Bush, worried about the Democrats getting traction with health care in a 1991 Senate special election, sent a plan to congress. “Bush didn’t like the issue, but he had a really good health team that put together a pretty good republican proposal,” Morone said.

• George W. Bush pushed for and signed the expansion of Medicare to include prescription drug coverage.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/sep/05/julian-castro/julian-castro-says-seven-presidents-barack-obama-s/

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