Want to know why the Republican health care plan is such an unmitigated disaster? This is probably preaching to the choir, but according to Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman, we should not “presume that [Paul] Ryan and company have any idea what they’re doing.”
That doesn’t stop Donald Trump from lying about it, tweeting this morning the appalling claim,
We are making great progress with healthcare. ObamaCare is imploding and will only get worse. Republicans coming together to get job done!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 11, 2017
Of course, Donald Trump is excited because Ryan’s plan is not, in fact, a healthcare plan at all but a $274 billion tax cut for the rich.
Besides focusing on tax cuts rather than actual healthcare, there is a reason Trumpcare is already worse than Obamacare and that reason is to be found in the plan’s author, Paul Ryan.
Krugman explains that Ryan is not a policy entrepreneur, but rather somebody who portrays one (and you thought Republicans hated entertainers):
“What I’d say is that Ryan is not, in fact, a policy entrepreneur. He’s just a self-promoter, someone who has successfully sold a credulous media on a character he plays: Paul Ryan, Serious, Honest Conservative Policy Wonk.”
And the GOP is up against an already existing healthcare plan in the Affordable Care Act that actually works pretty well, as he explained in a series of tweets Saturday morning:
As we wait for the CBO report on Trumpcare, brief notes on CBO projections past. (1) Basic point: CBO right to predict decline in uninsured pic.twitter.com/j8Z9361GE4
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) March 11, 2017
(2) CBO always predicted remaining uninsured, in part bc of undocumented, in part bc of Medicaid non-expansion https://t.co/9orquofMeO pic.twitter.com/JSNkVGya92
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) March 11, 2017
(3) Predicted decline in uninsurance rate 2013-16 was 45%. Actual was 38% — pretty good given uncertainty https://t.co/ErIlo5VR1U
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) March 11, 2017
(4) Premiums below projections 2014-16, rose in 2017 but still roughly where expected. Fewer people on exchanges, but more employer coverage
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) March 11, 2017
(5) Overall this is pretty darn good forecasting, given leap into unknown. Especially compared with R insistence that nobody would benefit!
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) March 11, 2017
As Krugman demonstrates, Obamacare delivered on its promises. Nobody has argued that it could not, and should not, be improved upon, but that was not the Republican plan. They had no plan. Krugman argues that,
“Everything else about the AHCA looks slapdash, like something thrown together in a few days by people who hadn’t thought at all” about the consequences and as a result,
“[T]his sure looks as if they were still dithering about the whole principle of their Obamacare replacement until at most a few weeks ago, and didn’t work with CBO because they had nothing to work with.”
There is no excuse for this when you consider they had seven years to think about it. The reason Spicer had such a short stack of plans to show is because they didn’t put any work into it, and “this looks like amateur hour because it is.” Republicans, says Krugman, have no idea what a workable plan would involve.
That’s a sad tale, when you consider they had a workable plan in front of them all along. It’s called Obamacare.
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