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Saturday, December 15, 2018

Obamacare's Successor

What would the Democrats do if presented with a simple bill that requires community ratings to be used in the sale of health insurance?  Such a law would mean that no one could be denied insurance because of his or her poor health.  It would mean that sick and well people pay the same price for insurance.  It would end all the shouting about "preexisting conditions" that are back in the news now that Obamacare has been ruled unconstitutional.

So I say again, if a simple bill were present to Congress that did nothing but require coverage of preexisting conditions, what would the Democrats do?  For that matter, what would the Republicans do?

A law of this sort would clearly be constitutional.  Congress can easily use the power to regulate commerce to set rules for the issuance of health insurance policies.  No one would be required to buy the policies.  This would just set limits on the items that an insurance company could consider in selling its products.

My prediction is that the GOP would readily adopt this bill.  They wouldn't want to oppose a simple measure like this.  The Democrats, however, are a different matter.  They might decide to claim that the bill would end the likelihood of other insurance measures passing and therefore refuse to vote in favor.  They would argue that they were voting no so that they could get approval of other measures.  I do wonder, however, how many voters would accept such nonsense.  More likely, the Democrats would be forced to vote in favor of such a bill.

Once this was passed, other items on which there could be agreement could be put forward, debated and passed (if there were a majority).  We already saw what happens with a 2500 page bill with 10,000 pages of regulations that no one reads or understands.  (It doesn't work.)  Why not try a simple bill instead that deals with basics first.

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