For whatever reason, what will happen? For the record, I don't think it will fail, but it's interesting to speculate what might replace it, if it becomes a catastrophe.
The GOP, no doubt, would want to revert to the status quo (with some meaningless "fixes", like tort reform), but that is now impossible, for a variety of reasons:
1. People won't go back to the bad old days, when insurance companies crawled up your ass looking for reasons to drop you or jack up your premiums.
Now they're only allowed a few pieces of information: age, tobacco use, pregnancy, and income. There's no serious conversation that comes after, "Remember the good old days, when preexisting conditions disqualified millions of people..." The Dems would absolutely balk at that anyway, and have a field day with the GOP over it. It's a non-starter.
2. There are three million more kids on their parents' plans thanks to the ACA. What politician is going to tell these families, "We're going to roll the whole thing back, and now your kids who are over 19 are going to dropped from your plan"? Again, the Dems would clobber them with it.
3. The Medicaid expansion (which is really the untold story of this whole thing), is in the process of extending coverage to millions. GOP governors are balking, but slowly falling in to line. Rick Scott flip-flopped back in Feb. and Florida is now taking the Medicaid money. John R. Kasich, GOP governor of Ohio, just did an end-run around his own legislature to get his hands on the Medicaid money. There's no way we're going to turn around and tell these people, who just got coverage, that they're no longer covered, so THAT part of the ACA will have to be left in place.
(1) and (2) aren't compatible with a free-market solution. If I'm an insurance company, and I'm not allowed to know much of anything about my customers AND I have to cover their kids till they're 26 AND there's no mandate to compel healthy people to join the pool, AND there's no subsidies to entice people to buy what I'm selling, how does that work? It doesn't. An actuarial death-spiral would ensue.
So if a free-market solution wont work, and a regulated subsidized free-market doesn't work (the ACA), what's left? Because of (3), I think we would end up just expanding Medicaid to cover anyone making, say, less than $100,000 ($200,000 for a household). Something like that. That or go with a govt. option. What else is there? The ACA WAS the conservative plan. If it fails, there's nothing to the right of it that's politically possible.
The GOP must realize this, yet they're cheering for this to fail. Don't they see what's coming next, if it does? I've never seen a group of people behave so irrationally.
The GOP, no doubt, would want to revert to the status quo (with some meaningless "fixes", like tort reform), but that is now impossible, for a variety of reasons:
1. People won't go back to the bad old days, when insurance companies crawled up your ass looking for reasons to drop you or jack up your premiums.
Now they're only allowed a few pieces of information: age, tobacco use, pregnancy, and income. There's no serious conversation that comes after, "Remember the good old days, when preexisting conditions disqualified millions of people..." The Dems would absolutely balk at that anyway, and have a field day with the GOP over it. It's a non-starter.
2. There are three million more kids on their parents' plans thanks to the ACA. What politician is going to tell these families, "We're going to roll the whole thing back, and now your kids who are over 19 are going to dropped from your plan"? Again, the Dems would clobber them with it.
3. The Medicaid expansion (which is really the untold story of this whole thing), is in the process of extending coverage to millions. GOP governors are balking, but slowly falling in to line. Rick Scott flip-flopped back in Feb. and Florida is now taking the Medicaid money. John R. Kasich, GOP governor of Ohio, just did an end-run around his own legislature to get his hands on the Medicaid money. There's no way we're going to turn around and tell these people, who just got coverage, that they're no longer covered, so THAT part of the ACA will have to be left in place.
(1) and (2) aren't compatible with a free-market solution. If I'm an insurance company, and I'm not allowed to know much of anything about my customers AND I have to cover their kids till they're 26 AND there's no mandate to compel healthy people to join the pool, AND there's no subsidies to entice people to buy what I'm selling, how does that work? It doesn't. An actuarial death-spiral would ensue.
So if a free-market solution wont work, and a regulated subsidized free-market doesn't work (the ACA), what's left? Because of (3), I think we would end up just expanding Medicaid to cover anyone making, say, less than $100,000 ($200,000 for a household). Something like that. That or go with a govt. option. What else is there? The ACA WAS the conservative plan. If it fails, there's nothing to the right of it that's politically possible.
The GOP must realize this, yet they're cheering for this to fail. Don't they see what's coming next, if it does? I've never seen a group of people behave so irrationally.
via JREF Forum http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=267626&goto=newpost
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