From the way Democrats are talking about Republican reforms to Obamacare, you'd think the Party of Lincoln was going house to house murdering people:
Hillary Clinton tweeted that "[i]f Republicans pass this bill, they're the death party."
Elizabeth Warren called the Republican health care bill '"blood money" that's being used to pay "for tax cuts with American lives."
In reality, the GOP isn't even coming close to following through on its promise to repeal and replace Obamacare. If it did, it might actually save lives, increase quality, and bring prices down.
The plans put forth by House and Senate Republicans, which are supported by President Donald Trump, keep in place the worst elements of the Affordable Care Act.
The House bill, for instance, replaces Obamacare subsidies with refundable tax credits, meaning the government would still pay people to buy insurance. Though it wouldn't require people to get insured, it does impose a penalty for dropping coverage that amounts to the same thing.
The Senate bill, in the words of Reason's Peter Suderman, is "just Obamacare, but less of it." Like the House bill, it requires that insurers accept all applicants regardless of pre-existing conditions and limits their ability to charge more for sicker patients. And it authorizes payments to insurers to cover losses imposed by price controls.
The real problem with both bills is that neither challenge Obamacare's central premise, which is that the federal government should micro-manage medical insurance markets.
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