Since the inception of the Affordable Care Act, there have been relentless efforts to downplay the benefits of the law, expose loopholes in the way health care reform works, and repeal the law more than once. In a recent effort to improve Obamacare by repealing and replacing it with healthcare reform that is presumably better than PPACA, three Republican senators—Richard Burr of North Carolina, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, and Orrin Hatch of Utah—have unveiled the law. Patient CARE. The Patient Choice, Affordability, Responsibility and Empowerment (CARE) Act is a proposal that replaces the fundamentals of the PPACA with the Republicans’ own proposals.
However, a closer look at the proposed CARE Act reveals that it is nothing more than a glorified private insurance exchange and is far from the solution that Obamacare currently needs. So what is the CARE Act about?
1) Establish sustainable reforms: Republicans widely feel that Obamacare is going into a death spiral under its own weight. While that seems a long way off, the CARE Act plans to implement common sense consumer protection plans that can be sustained for a longer period of time. With that, Republicans are also proposing to create a new protection plan for patients with a pre-existing medical condition. Yet they have overlooked the fact that private health exchanges under Obamacare work to normalize the risk pool by enrolling younger, healthier people. The classic example here is the private eHealth exchange, which boasts a 40% youth enrollment rate.
2) Medicaid Modernization: Modernizing Medicaid for better coverage and care for patients through limited allocation is one of the most prominent features of the CARE Act. While this cap may sound crazy right now, it will provide predictable funding and flexibility for states.
3) Limiting employer-provided health coverage: In an effort to reduce distortions in the tax code, Republicans have proposed a cap on the tax exclusion granted to employers for employee health insurance.
4) Increase transparency in the price of health care: To affect a transparent system that delineates the price of health care, Republicans propose greater transparency to ensure that the customer can make a better purchase decision when buying health insurance .
However, as encouraging as the above list may seem, the CARE Act will do nothing to fix the promise of Obamacare. In fact, by adding these loopholes into the ACA, the CARE Act is only widening the pain points for potential clients. For example, the cap on Medicaid, the reduction of employer-provided insurance, and the manipulation of the successful aspects of Obamacare: all of these aspects will hinder the current shape of American health care reform.
So instead of repealing PPACA and replacing it with CARE, a much smarter solution would be to keep PPACA and fix things, like making the law more attractive to invincible youth. For now, that’s what America needs for its healthcare reform, rather than another attempt that is nothing more than a private exchange that plays by different rules.