The Issues with Scott Walker’s Obamacare Replacement Plan

[Valin]

National Review/The Corner:

Avik Roy

August 19, 2015

 

Yesterday, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker laid out his plan to repeal and replace Obamacare. Full credit to him for putting his ideas out there on this important topic, something that all Republican presidential candidates should do over the course of this campaign. Health care reform is never easy, and Walker’s plan suffers from a number of problems that conservatives should be aware of as we consider how best to replace Obamacare. The core of Walker’s approach is a new, universal entitlement that every legal U.S. resident would be eligible for, regardless of income or need. In a February post for The Corner, I described some of the issues with this approach. (I am an adviser to former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, but the Corner post predates that affiliation.)

 

Most importantly, from a standpoint of political economy, creating a new, universal, multi-trillion-dollar entitlement will have significant unintended consequences. Such a subsidy will be extremely difficult to reform, in the same way that Medicare is, and for the same reasons: politicians will have a powerful interest in increasing the size and value of this universal entitlement over time. As I note in a new piece at Forbes, Walker’s approach to health care would not only create a new universal entitlement, but it would expand Medicare spending by around $800 billion over ten years, because it repeals Obamacare’s cuts to Medicare without replacing them.

 

Walker promises that his plan won’t increase the deficit. But that means that he will need to offset the cost of his replacement plan—as much as $1 trillion over ten years, depending on unknown details—with spending cuts and taxes elsewhere. Walker specifies that he would fund his plan by and large through cuts to Medicaid. The end result is that Walker’s plan would reduce federal health spending on lower-income Americans by trillions of dollars over time, while substantially increasing federal health spending on upper-income Americans by trillions of dollars over time. Welfare for Republicans is still welfare. The likelihood of such a plan garnering 60 votes in the Senate is slim to none; any plan that fails to pass Congress further ensures Obamacare’s permanence, and makes real entitlement reform that much harder.

 

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[Valin]

Jindal vs. Walker on Health Care
Ramesh Ponnuru

August 18, 2015

 

Let The Games Begin!

 

Changing the way we subsidize health insurance so that almost everyone can get catastrophic insurance is a good idea, and I think it has to be part of any politically viable Obamacare replacement plan. Scott Walker’s new plan draws on many other conservative replacement plans that agree on that point and use a tax credit to achieve it. But agreement among conservatives is not universal. Bobby Jindal believes that it is a surrender to liberalism to seek to replace Obamacare with a plan that attempts to cover roughly as many people. (We’ve debated this question before: see here and here, for example.)

 

Today Jindal unloaded on Walker’s plan in a press release.

 

(Snip)

 

 

Update: Jindal press secretary Shannon Dirmann emails: “There are many instances when a narrow tax credit could make sense — but Governor Walker’s plan is not that. This is a new entitlement program for every American, and the plan doesn’t state how much it costs or how he will pay for it. That’s the Washington way. The Governor is happy to have this discussion in person with Governor Walker. He would debate him on health care any time.”

 

The McCain tax credits Jindal praised would have covered far more people than the ones in Walker’s plan, which are limited to people who do not have employer coverage.

[Valin]

Walker’s Obamacare Alternative: Setting the Record Straight
JEFFREY H. ANDERSON

Aug 26, 2015

 

On August 18, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker became the first leading Republican presidential candidate to release a full-fledged Obamacare alternative. Walker’s alternative would fully repeal Obamacare and provide the sort of real reform for which Americans have long been waiting. But there has been a fair amount of misreporting in the wake of Walker’s announcement, and it’s worth setting the record straight.

 

(Snip)