Paul Krugman on the Republican Obamacare Replacement

[n2doc]

A Plan Set Up To Fail
MARCH 7, 2017 9:01 AM March 7, 2017 9:01 am Comment

So now we know what Republicans have to offer as an Obamacare replacement. Let me try to avoid value judgments for a few minutes, and describe what seems to have happened here.

The structure of the Affordable Care Act comes out of a straightforward analysis of the logic of coverage. If you want to make health insurance available and affordable for almost everyone, regardless of income or health status, and you want to do this through private insurers rather than simply have single-payer, you have to do three things.

1.Regulate insurers so they can’t refuse or charge high premiums to people with preexisting conditions
2.Impose some penalty on people who don’t buy insurance, to induce healthy people to sign up and provide a workable risk pool
3.Subsidize premiums so that lower-income households can afford insurance

So that’s Obamacare (and Romneycare before that): regulation, mandates, and subsidies. And the result has been a sharp decline in the number of uninsured, with costs coming in well below expectations. Roughly speaking, 20 million Americans gained coverage at a cost of around 0.6 percent of GDP.

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https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2017/03/07/a-plan-set-up-to-fail/?_r=0

[flamingdem]

1. If a democrat votes for this, even in an improved form

they need to be primaried.