GOP Lawmakers Release Plan To Repeal And Replace Obamacare

Alan: As Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney discovered when he crafted the nation's first "Universal Healthcare Coverage," there is No Way to make universal coverage work without an individual mandate.

Republicans cling to "Too Pure Principles" -- in this case the principle of "No New Taxes" -- in order to "have a position" on major issues even if their positions are, in practice, intrinsically unworkable in practice.

For American "conservatives" it is all about "Old Time Religion" and the accompanying proclamation that "free markets" and "the invisible hand" will right every economic wrong.

Conservatives do not need viable politics. They need mechanisms to keep their belief system alive. 

For those Americans whose development was arrested during "Puerile Perfectionism" there is nothing to do but "get out of the way" and let the magic of unregulated capitalism work its magic.

Senior G.O.P. lawmakers release a plan to repeal and replace Obamacare. 

There are a few main points:

-- The individual mandate is repealed.

-- There's a ban on preexisting conditions, but only for people who have maintained continuous coverage since an initial enrollment period.

-- The tax preference for employer plans is capped, to replace Obamacare's Cadillac tax as a way to discourage excessive coverage.

-- Plans are no longer required to include a list of basic benefits, but young people can still stay on their parents' plans until they are 26.

Jason Millman in The Washington Post.

 

Pope Francis Just Showed He's Not Afraid To Part With The American Right

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/02/pope-francis-just-showed-hes-not-afraid.html

Pope Francis: Moving The Moral Compass From The Individual Toward The Collective

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/01/pope-francis-moving-moral-judgment-from.html

"Pope Francis Links"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/11/pope-francis-links.html

 

Previous Catholic teaching on capitalism: "[The Church] has likewise refused to accept, in the practice of “capitalism,” individualism and the absolute primacy of the law of the marketplace over human labor. Regulating the economy … solely by the law of the marketplace fails social justice, for “there are many human needs which cannot be satisfied by the market.” Caritas in Veritate by Pope Benedict XVI

"Mercy... makes the world more just."

Pope Francis

http://www.xavier.edu/jesuitresource/online-resources/Pope-Francis.cfm

Pope Francis: “A savage capitalism has taught the logic of profit at any cost, of giving in order to get, of exploitation without thinking of people… and we see the results in the crisis we are experiencing.”