House Republicans take a giant step toward better health care.
The Wall Street Journal
May 4, 2017
Pete Caster (pcaster@chronline.com)
The media template for covering the 115th Congress apparently goes like this: When Republicans fail to pass a bill, they’re doomed. But when they succeed, they’re also doomed. Thus the same media sages who said the House could never repeal ObamaCare are now saying that the replacement the House passed Thursday can’t pass the Senate.
The wish is the mother of this analysis, and predictions about the Senate are worth about as much as the guarantees of President Hillary Clinton. The reality is that the House success, however narrow the 217-213 vote, is the first essential step toward fulfilling the GOP’s top campaign promise.
While the job was messier than it should have been, the result shows that Republicans can hold a governing majority despite unprecedented media, interest-group and Democratic hostility. The majority spanned the GOP conference from Michigan libertarian Justin Amash to moderate Carlos Curbelo, who deserves special notice for political courage considering his swing Miami district. If you doubt this is a big moment, imagine the media obituaries for Republicans if they had failed.
Credit goes to House leaders for sticking with their essential product and working around the edges to cajole a majority. The bill that passed is remarkably similar to the one that GOP leaders first introduced. The changes demanded first by the Freedom Caucus and then some moderates are tweaks that don’t alter the reform’s core architecture.
The bill includes deregulatory steps to pave the way for a variety of insurance coverage that more people can afford; the largest entitlement reform in decades by devolving control over Medicaid to the states; a $1 trillion spending cut over a decade; tax credits for individual insurance that begin to equalize the tax treatment of health care for individuals and businesses; and the repeal of ObamaCare taxes totaling $900 billion over 10 years.
The bill doesn’t repeal all of ObamaCare because it can’t without Democratic help under the Senate’s budget rules. But the bill marks a giant step away from the Democratic march to government-run health care, which is why the political and cultural left have been so vitriolic in their denunciations.
The Senate will now put its stamp on the policy, and no doubt there will be many perils of Rand Paul-ine moments with only a 52-seat GOP majority. The House bill will change, but reporters who think it is doomed should get off Twitter and make some calls. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been counting votes and calculating necessary compromises for some time.
House Republicans should be prepared that some of their planks may not survive Senate budget rules. They’ll have to be flexible enough to accept the compromises that are inevitable in a bicameral legislature. The trump card, so to speak, is that this process will yield a binary political choice: Either Members vote for what emerges from the House and Senate, or live with the status quo of ObamaCare.
That status quo is deteriorating as this week’s decision by Aetna to withdraw from Virginia’s health exchanges shows. Republicans need to act within weeks to clarify the rules of the individual insurance market for 2018. The lobby for the insurance industry issued a generally supportive statement on House passage, which offers some hope that congressional action can forestall a market collapse. Republicans will be blamed for that collapse whether or not they pass repeal and replace.
A word about the legislative process and political hypocrisy. Democrats and the media are howling that Republicans passed their bill before the Congressional Budget Office issued its final score of the budget and insurance impact. They have a point, but anyone voting Thursday had ample time to understand the policy choices.
As for CBO’s score, really? We don’t recall the same media concern for budget exactitude when Democrats rammed through ObamaCare on a partisan vote with more gimmicks than a traveling carnival. Remember the Class Act on long-term care that gilded the deficit numbers until it was quickly repealed? And don’t forget the government takeover of the student-loan market that was packaged with ObamaCare because CBO said it would save taxpayers money. Now loan defaults are bleeding red ink.
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Which brings us to the main Republican weakness, which has been the failure to make the public case for this reform. House leaders have been preoccupied with twisting arms, leaving critics unrebutted.
President Trump deserves credit for his inside game of persuasion, and the bill wouldn’t have passed without his one-on-one lobbying. But a President also has a unique public platform, and Mr. Trump needs to use it to make a sustained case for the benefits and necessity of this reform. Tweets aren’t enough. He needs to make speeches that include persuasive details beyond superlative adjectives.
But these challenges wouldn’t matter if House Republicans had failed this week. Now it’s the Senate’s turn to fulfill seven years of promises to replace ObamaCare.
Appeared in the May. 05, 2017, print edition.
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