Nothing New With Obamacare

The health care reform has been a success in terms of the amount of people with health coverage today. The health system catastrophe and economic meltdown predicted by the Republican opposition has not materialized.

However, The House of Representatives voted again last week— for the 56th time, according to the Democrats— to eliminate Obamacare. This is a futile political exercise that only helps Republicans raise funds from the most conservative sector.

In this case, the GOP has received the same criticism as always: They oppose Obamacare without proposing anything in exchange. In response to this, Republican senators Richard Burr, Orrin Hatch and Fred Upton presented the Patient Choice, Affordability, Responsibility and Empowerment Act (CARE). The only novelty here was the announcement that is was new, since the same ideas were touted last tear.

The proposal keeps some Obamacare aspects, but it exposes older patients to higher costs, and offers fewer protections in case you are rejected by an insurance company. What it does not say is what is going to happen with the 10 million patients who have benefited from the Medicaid expansions. It also eliminates the mandate to get insurance, which maintains the necessary balance of sick and healthy subscribers to keep costs under control.

The only reason why this exists is to give the impression that there is an alternative to Obamacare as the Supreme Court is studying limiting some aspects of its implementation.

The fact is that Obamacare, with all the implementation challenges that still persist, has drastically increased the percentage of insured people, and has contributed to the economic recovery.

The good sign is that more Republican governors now accept Obamacare instead of opposing it. The program’s benefits for their population are making them put aside their ideological differences.

We hope that Republicans in Congress get the message that they need to work on improving Obamacare instead of destroying it. That would really be a new and positive approach by the new Congress