The GOP's "New" (And Very Old) Healthcare Plan

BURR, COBURN AND HATCH: Our plan to replace Obamacare. "[W]e adopt policies that will make the market more transparent, competitive, and responsive to consumer demands. We expand health care savings tools like health savings accounts, which allow consumers to keep more of their dollars for their health care needs. We also put the brakes on another driver of health care costs -- the practice of defensive medicine -- by suggesting medical liability reforms." Richard Burr, Tom Coburn and Orrin Hatch in Fox News.

***

"Here's Why Republicans Have No Alternative To Obamacare"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/11/heres-why-republicans-have-no.html

***

Republicans have an Obamacare replacement. Economists will love it, real people won't. "Republican Sens. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) released Thursday what is arguably the most complete Obamacare replacement plan offered by their party to date. It is a piece of legislation that, like the Affordable Care Act, aims to increase access to health care and drive down costs...It would end pre-existing conditions limitations for those who remain continuously insured...If Americans let their health coverage lapse -- decide, for example, that they're pretty healthy and want to make a go of being uninsured -- they could be charged for their pre-existing conditions when they come back into the individual market to buy coverage...Republican replacement plan would let Americans use tax credits to purchase insurance coverage if they earned less than 300 percent of the poverty line." Sarah Kliff in The Washington Post.

Explainer: Here's the deal with the Obamacare 'bailout'. Sarah Kliff in The Washington Post.

More details on the Coburn-Burr-Hatch plan. "[T]he plan would reform Medicaid using an approach first proposed by Bill Clinton, and endorsed by former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle: per-capita caps. Under the per-capita cap approach, the federal government would give states a fixed amount of money per person enrolled in Medicaid. It would be up to the states to use that money in the most cost-efficient way possible." Avik Roy in Forbes.