GOP Resorts To Lies And Obfuscation Regarding Repeal And Replace

Republicans are really starting to feel the heat over repealing Obamacare. Numerous GOP Congressmen have returned for meetings in their districts and been confronted with angry crowds wanting to know what exactly is going to happen with their health care. Those representatives really have no answer at this point.

The Republican leadership hasn't been able to come up with a real replacement plan in the last six years and they have seem to be just as lost today. There is no way they can come up with a plan that will rival the coverage and costs of Obamacare without spending more money, which is totally out of the question. Any other plan that would be able to cover the same number of uninsured as Obamacare for less money would rely on cheap, crappy insurance that would provide far less coverage and/or more out of pocket costs for the consumer.

So, in response, the GOP has resorted to its usual tactics of obfuscation and outright lies. Yesterday, John Cornyn pledged, "Nobody's going to lose coverage. Obviously, people covered today will continue to be covered." Of course, even before Obamacare, insurance coverage was theoretically available to everyone. The question was always whether it was affordable and what kind of coverage your money could buy. Cheap, crappy coverage will always be available. It just won't do you much good when you really get sick. As Drum also notes, "This could mean anything. It could mean giving the poor a $1,000 refundable tax credit they can use toward buying coverage on the open market, which would be useless. It could mean giving the poor access to tax-favored HSAs and catastrophic coverage, which would also be useless. It could mean keeping them on Medicaid but instituting a 50 percent copay to make sure they have 'skin in the game'."

Meanwhile, that great policy wonk, Paul Ryan has moved beyond meaningless obfuscation that allows people to hear what they want to hear and into outright lies. In a softball interview with Charlie Rose, Ryan said this, "We also think that a refundable tax credit is a smarter way to get people the ability to go buy insurance that they like that they can afford. That's better than [Obamacare's] subsidies. A refundable tax credit means you get assistance to regardless of your income tax liability to buy care". As Jordan Weissmann over at Moneybox points out, the IRS has determined that Obama's subsidies are, you guessed it, a refundable tax credit. Michael Hiltzik ran down the list of outright lies that Ryan spouted in his town hall a week ago. The claims that the law is collapsing, premiums are skyrocketing, and Obamacare in a death spiral are all fabrications. His proposal for high risk pools is a proven joke and his answer to a question about what a replacement would look like was that he didn't want to get into "all of the legislative mumbo-jumbo".

As I have written before, if Obamacare does go into a death spiral it will be because the uncertainty about the (lack of) Republican's repeal and replace plan will drive insurers out of the market for 2018. Those insurers have to make plans by late spring this year if they are going to remain or drop out of the exchanges. The obfuscation and outright lies from the GOP leadership will not give those insurers much confidence to remain.