Five Questions I Will Use to Evaluate the Phantom Senate Health Care Bill
Rumor has it that tomorrow is the day Senate Republican leaders will unveil the health care bill they have been busily assembling behind closed doors. So few details have emerged, President Trump could maybe learn something from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell about how to prevent leaks. Even GOP senators are complaining they haven’t been allowed to see the bill.
Here are five questions I will be asking about the Senate health care bill if and when it sees the light of day.
- Would it repeal the parts of ObamaCare — specifically, community rating—that preclude secure access to health care for the sick by causing coverage to become worse for the sick and the Exchanges to collapse?
- Would it make health care more affordable, or just throw subsidies at unaffordable care?
- Would it actually sunset the Medicaid expansion, or keep the expansion alive long enough for a future Democratic Congress to rescue it?
- Tax cuts are almost irrelevant — how much of ObamaCare’s spending would it repeal?
- If it leaves major elements of ObamaCare in place, would it lead voters to blame the ongoing failure of those provisions on (supposed) free‐market reforms?
Depending on how Senate Republicans — or at least, the select few who get to write major legislation — answer those questions, the bill could be a step in the right direction. Or it could be ObamaCare‐lite.
