Yes, There's A Republican Health Care Plan: Bobby Jindal's Plan | RedState

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There’s a Republican alternative to Obamacare – a health insurance plan rolled out today by Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal. It’s not only a better plan, but starts with a better way to think about how we pay for healthcare.

The Search For A Republican Alternative

One of the hoary, beaten-to-death talking points of Obamacare’s last-ditch defenders has been that it’s impossible to repeal the Affordable Care Act because there isn’t an alternative on the table. Of course, while there are some transitional issues that would arise in unwinding the damage Obamacare has done to the pre-Obamacare insurance market, if you believe (as most Obamacare critics do) that the statute has made things on balance worse, then there’s no reason why Congress couldn’t or shouldn’t first tear the thing up and then get to work finding a different way to improve our healthcare system. And part of what is at work in this line of criticism is the Wonk Hack Trap: the desire of liberal policy writers and Democratic ad-makers to force Republicans to submit detailed plans to be picked apart with one-sided propaganda before there is any realistic prospect of them even being seriously debated, and possibly improved, in Congress (see this Jonathan Chait piece on the 2015 Ryan budget for a classic example of the genre – of course, with Harry Reid running the Senate, no Republican policy proposal has any prospect of being considered for a vote).

But as Ben Domenech has noted, there are actually a number of principles that already attract the consensus support of most Republican lawmakers:

1. They want to end the tax bias in favor of employer-sponsored health insurance to create full portability (either through a tax credit, deductibility, or another method);
2. They want to reform medical malpractice laws (likely through carrot incentives to the states);
3. They want to allow for insurance purchases across state lines;
4. They want to support state-level pre-existing condition pools;
5. They want to fully block grant Medicaid;
6. They want to shift Medicare to premium support;
7. They want to speed up the FDA device and drug approval process; and
8. They want to maximize the health savings account model, one of the few avenues proven to lower health care spending, making these high deductible + HSA plans more attractive where Obamacare hamstrung them.

The best time to put such plans on the table is in a presidential campaign, or when the party holds both Houses of Congress (as it may next year, but does not now) and can pass at least parts of it and force the President to veto. Unfortunately, in 2012, Republicans were unable to offer a forceful message on this issue, because their candidate had already signed into law a plan nearly identical to Obamacare at the state level, and was generally interested in avoiding discussion of specific plans. Many Republicans would prefer to just stay silent for now, at least until 2015, in hopes of capitalizing on longstanding voter dissatisfaction with Obamacare. But with the Senate up for grabs and potential presidential candidates beginning to gear up, Governor Jindal has decided that it’s time to put his cards on the table with a plan that includes many of these elements and some specific ideas of his own.

Jindal is already a veteran of the healthcare wars. In 1996, he was appointed – at age 24 – as Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, running the entire state hospital system, and in 1998 he served as Executive Director of the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare, a Clinton-created bipartisan commission. A bipartisan majority of the commission ended up recommending a “premium support” plan for Medicare reform based on a model that Jindal had originally put together as a Congressional intern – a plan that (in varying forms) has resurfaced in Paul Ryan’s annual budget proposals. Jindal went on to work as a policy advisor to Tommy Thompson in the Bush-era Department of Health and Human Services before his tenure as a Congressman and Governor, and he’s been engaged in healthcare issues in his two terms as Governor of Louisiana. So, his plan is not merely a thrown-together campaign document, but represents his long-term thinking about how to approach healthcare.

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Yes, There's A Republican Health Care Plan: Bobby Jindal's Plan | RedState

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