Holtz-Eakin: GOP governors embracing "single-payer Trojan horse hidden in Obamacare"

[Greenbeard]

The schism on the right about how to approach Obamacare continues. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a longtime critic of Obamacare and former CBO director for a previous GOP Congress, weighs in today with his suggestion in "Yes to Exchanges." He pulls out some of the right's greatest rhetorical hits from the past three years to warn that the tack some Republicans have taken on the state level is unintentionally embracing a "single-payer Trojan horse."

If states fail to establish their own exchanges by December 15, the law says the federal government will step in and establish the exchanges for them. Already 18 states have decided to leave their exchanges to the federal government, choosing a slippery slope toward precisely what liberal Democrats want: a federally controlled health-care system that would be the first step toward European-style, single-payer health care.

Conservatives have an obligation to keep this from happening. Setting up state-based exchanges is an important piece of defense.

Under Obamacare, health-insurance exchanges — new, state-based markets for buying health insurance — must be up and running in every state by January 1, 2014. States that establish their own exchanges will design them and decide how they will function. States can take steps to keep exchange costs low, respond locally to consumer questions and concerns, and make sure that consumers have many health-insurance products to choose from.

States can, and should, control their destinies by deciding how their exchanges will function, which private insurance companies can participate, and what kind of insurance coverage will be offered. They should use their political leverage — the administration desperately wants them to sign on to Medicaid expansions — to pare back the regulations and unrealistic timetables that would govern a state exchange. This is the kind of local decision-making that works best for businesses, workers, and taxpayers.

The alternative, if states decline to design and operate their own exchanges, is a federally-facilitated exchange--an option several conservative governors have already chosen. Holtz-Eakin doesn't like this one bit:

This would truly be a Washington takeover of health care. And if conservatives allow it to happen, they will be consenting to an unprecedented and potentially irreversible intrusion into states’ economies and health-care systems. It would give single-payer advocates a foothold across many states.

In fact, federal “fallback” exchanges are the single-payer Trojan horse hidden in Obamacare. Conservatives must not allow themselves to be outfoxed and overrun.

This is spicy stuff!

I have to say, watching the debate on the right about what to do now is fascinating.

 

[KissMy]

Apparently Missouri is one of those states. They voted down the ACA exchange, but now there is a Federal Insurance Pool on the Missouri Health Insurance Website. The Federal Insurance Pool Prices are more than double what they are in the private market & the coverage is way worse. I knew government health-care was going to be more expensive.

 

[dblack]

This is spicy stuff!

I have to say, watching the debate on the right about what to do now is fascinating.

Yes, yes ... another display of how much pleasure you take in watching the minority agonize over their predicament. It's not uncommon to discover the raw psychology of the sadist lurking behind authoritarian polices.

 

[Greenbeard]

Apparently Missouri is one of those states. They voted down the ACA exchange, but now there is a Federal Insurance Pool on the Missouri Health Insurance Website. The Federal Insurance Pool Prices are more than double what they are in the private market & the coverage is way worse. I knew government health-care was going to be more expensive.

...that's a high-risk pool. It's only for the uninsurable and dissolves at the end of this year.

The exchange is a marketplace with a level playing field. Missouri's will be operated by the federal government.

 

[JakeStarkey]

Very interesting, Greenbeard. I am a Republican who is fully aware that my party had twelve years to do something and decided instead to go to war and to deregulate public interest industries.

Keep us informed, please.

 

[Greenbeard]

The OP was obviously from four months ago but Holtz-Eakin teamed up with another conservative, Avik Roy, a Manhattan Institute fellow who blogs about health care for Forbes, to write an op-ed a week or so ago about The future of free-market health care.

The great irony of Obama’s triumph, however, is that it can pave the way for Republicans to adopt a comprehensive, market-oriented healthcare agenda. The market-oriented prescription drug program in Medicare has controlled the growth of government health spending. Similarly, conservatives can use Obamacare’s important concession to the private sector — its establishment of subsidized insurance marketplaces — as a vehicle for broader entitlement reforms.

They make the basic argument that Obamacare isn't going away, so the conservative policy goal had to be to try to make sure it hews as closely to their preferences as possible. Quite true.

Even the true believers seem to have gotten the memo.

Over the past several years, as the debate over President Obama's national health care law was raging, the largest annual gathering of conservatives held regular panel discussions on the topic. Not this year. Laura Rigas, a spokeswoman for the American Conservative Union (which runs CPAC), confirmed to me that although "health care and the associated budget-busting costs at the federal and state level will be addressed in a number of panels," there would be no panel dedicated exclusively to the health care issue.

"Obamacare was obviously huge over the past couple of years, but Obamacare is done," Rigas explained.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Very interesting, Greenbeard. I am a Republican who is fully aware that my party had twelve years to do something and decided instead to go to war and to deregulate public interest industries.

Keep us informed, please.

Jake I am a Republican Starkey

 

[Queecho Feecho]

The schism on the right about how to approach Obamacare continues. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a longtime critic of Obamacare and former CBO director for a previous GOP Congress, weighs in today with his suggestion in "Yes to Exchanges." He pulls out some of the right's greatest rhetorical hits from the past three years to warn that the tack some Republicans have taken on the state level is unintentionally embracing a "single-payer Trojan horse."

If states fail to establish their own exchanges by December 15, the law says the federal government will step in and establish the exchanges for them. Already 18 states have decided to leave their exchanges to the federal government, choosing a slippery slope toward precisely what liberal Democrats want: a federally controlled health-care system that would be the first step toward European-style, single-payer health care.

Conservatives have an obligation to keep this from happening. Setting up state-based exchanges is an important piece of defense.

Under Obamacare, health-insurance exchanges — new, state-based markets for buying health insurance — must be up and running in every state by January 1, 2014. States that establish their own exchanges will design them and decide how they will function. States can take steps to keep exchange costs low, respond locally to consumer questions and concerns, and make sure that consumers have many health-insurance products to choose from.

States can, and should, control their destinies by deciding how their exchanges will function, which private insurance companies can participate, and what kind of insurance coverage will be offered. They should use their political leverage — the administration desperately wants them to sign on to Medicaid expansions — to pare back the regulations and unrealistic timetables that would govern a state exchange. This is the kind of local decision-making that works best for businesses, workers, and taxpayers.

The alternative, if states decline to design and operate their own exchanges, is a federally-facilitated exchange--an option several conservative governors have already chosen. Holtz-Eakin doesn't like this one bit:

This would truly be a Washington takeover of health care. And if conservatives allow it to happen, they will be consenting to an unprecedented and potentially irreversible intrusion into states’ economies and health-care systems. It would give single-payer advocates a foothold across many states.

In fact, federal “fallback” exchanges are the single-payer Trojan horse hidden in Obamacare. Conservatives must not allow themselves to be outfoxed and overrun.

This is spicy stuff!

I have to say, watching the debate on the right about what to do now is fascinating.

I'd suggest you don't use that person as a source for any more information regarding PPACA, because they are far from being correct in their assessment.

The Exchanges themselves almost no resemblance to single-payer health care. They are nothing more than a place where insurance companies list their plans for sale along with the prices so people can see the plans and prices and shop.

Any state that opts out of running their Exchange will have a FFE - federally-facilitated exchange. All that means is that the federal government, HHS specifically, will run an Exchange.

If, on the other hand, the state decides to run its own, then that is all it means. The state runs it. They still have to meet all the rules that the feds/HHS set for Exchanges.

 

[JakeStarkey]

Very interesting, Greenbeard. I am a Republican who is fully aware that my party had twelve years to do something and decided instead to go to war and to deregulate public interest industries.

Keep us informed, please.

Jake I am a Republican Starkey

Frank is one of the biggest loonies on the board, so this is high praise.

 

[Greenbeard]

The Exchanges themselves almost no resemblance to single-payer health care. They are nothing more than a place where insurance companies list their plans for sale along with the prices so people can see the plans and prices and shop.

Indeed!

 

[Queecho Feecho]

The Exchanges themselves almost no resemblance to single-payer health care. They are nothing more than a place where insurance companies list their plans for sale along with the prices so people can see the plans and prices and shop.

Indeed!

So you agree?

 

[Greenbeard]

The Exchanges themselves almost no resemblance to single-payer health care. They are nothing more than a place where insurance companies list their plans for sale along with the prices so people can see the plans and prices and shop.

Indeed!

So you agree?

That exchanges are marketplaces? Of course.

The point of the OP isn't that what Holtz-Eakin is saying is true. Nothing the GOP says about that ACA is true. Obviously there isn't actually any path to single-payer in the ACA. Certainly not federally-facilitated exchanges.

What's interesting is that this is the specter that some of their intellectuals, such as they are, happen to be raising to push some of the more ideological factions on the far right to take control and implement the exchanges at the state level as they were meant to be. The state/federal distinction is a perennial problem for them: Do they federalize tort law? State-ize exchanges? There's no consensus within the party on such things. Which can lead them to using their own scare tactics on themselves, as in this case.

 

[Antares]

You are so full of shit

You change every time you read a new article.

I've been telling you that the ACA was a Trojan Horse since I got here...get some integrity.

Indeed!

So you agree?

That exchanges are marketplaces? Of course.

The point of the OP isn't that what Holtz-Eakin is saying is true. Nothing the GOP says about that ACA is true. Obviously there isn't actually any path to single-payer in the ACA. Certainly not federally-facilitated exchanges.

What's interesting is that this is the specter that some of their intellectuals, such as they are, happen to be raising to push some of the more ideological factions on the far right to take control and implement the exchanges at the state level as they were meant to be. The state/federal distinction is a perennial problem for them: Do they federalize tort law? State-ize exchanges? There's no consensus within the party on such things. Which can lead them to using their own scare tactics on themselves, as in this case.

 

[Antares]

Why don't you be honest here old man?

How does a plan get INTO the exchange?

The Exchanges themselves almost no resemblance to single-payer health care. They are nothing more than a place where insurance companies list their plans for sale along with the prices so people can see the plans and prices and shop.

Indeed!

 

[boedicca]

Most of us who opposed ObamaCare have said it would be a Trojan Horse.

We're correct. And health care will be far more expensive with much less services as a result of the ACA.

 

[Greenbeard]

I've been telling you that the ACA was a Trojan Horse since I got here...get some integrity.

You've also been saying the public option passed with the law because you can't navigate the Library of Congress website.

Frankly, you're an idiot.