The immoral Senate health care bill

The immoral Senate health care bill: Distinctly Catholic: The Senate's "repeal and replace Obamacare" legislation, finally unveiled, is especially harmful to the young and elderly. It is a plague upon the U.S. people.

MGB: Letting insurers charge older people five times as much is the provision that cannot be allowed to stand - which I say as an older person. This kind of pain will hurt the GOP base more than it will help insurance companies. Insurance is about everyone having some pain and no one being overwhelmed, as this bill does.

I doubt that this will pass a Byrd rule challenge - not because it does not on paper but because there is no chance it will pick up seven Democratic votes in its current form. As far as I know, the challenge does not have to be true, it just has to have the requisite votes to overcome. This bill does not. Doesn't anyone in the Senate leadership read the Budget Act?

The reason this debate is happening is because Obama and the Democrats were too cute by half in financing the ACA. Had they not respected the Obama promise that no one under a certain income would pay more taxes, a more broad based funding source, such as a payroll tax or value added tax could have been found and there would be no impetus (donors) to push the GOP bill along. It is almost as if the Democrats wanted the GOP to stage this little morality play. This is fine if they can defeat it with the Byrd Rule or can put a VAT in now to at least partially repeal the high unearned-income taxes, leaving the other provisions to die by amendment. It would be better to simply combine this bill with tax reform (and federalize Medicaid for seniors and the disabled rather than cutting it). Of course, that defies the common sense rule - if it makes sense, it won't be discussed.

The important thing to note about the Republican bills is that they are not designed to make Obamacare better.  They are designed to make it and the prospects of private comprehensive health insurance worse.  The Republican ideal has always been Catastrophic Insurance supplemented by Health Savings Accounts.  The problem is that there are gaps between the two if you really get sick.  While these gaps could be filled with the Medical Line of Credit (which would also fund abortion services), the vast majority of Americans don't want to use their health insurance as just another investment vehicle.  They want full coverage when they get sick because health care is not a normal good.

The Democratic ideal is, of course, single payer.  Some call it Medicare for all, but Medicare Part C and Obamacare are not so very different, so that mission is accomplished.  Real single-payer is Medicaid for all, but that will not end the perpetual battle between health care and tax cutting, which is why the GOP resists VAT funding for entitlements and health because such taxes are easier to increase.  Still, the American public fears such socialistic sounding solutions (even if health insurance companies will likely administer any single-payer plan).  They also like their current comprehensive coverage, especially because employer pay most of it.

It may be that the way to get to single-payer is to let the Republicans destroy Obamacare and Comprehensive Insurance, although that would damage too many people along the way.  The best we can do is to call the GOP out for trying to make Obamacare and private insurance worse so that they can apply their "free market solution" and to note that they don't have the guts to even mention their preferred solution now.  Let's not help keep their secret.