Column: Why Obamacare Repeal Must Come with Replacement
America is at a crossroads with our health care system. We've got three choices: 1) keep Obamacare, 2) repeal Obamacare without a replacement plan, or 3) repeal and replace it together.
I've spoken at length about the need to repeal Obamacare. It's the central issue I campaigned on when I first ran for
Keeping Obamacare is simply not a viable option.
Option 2 - Fully repealing Obamacare only, without replacing the current broken system, is a position that some constituents have called, emailed, and spoken to me about. Others have suggested that
First, Obamacare is not a single entity that can be swapped out like a new spark plug to keep the health care system's engine running. More accurately, it is a concept that describes 8,000 pages of laws and regulations that deal with everything from numerous types of taxes, employer regulations, the handling of
A complete reset of all those different aspects of the system could cause dramatic instability in our financial markets. It could throw funding mechanisms for hospitals and medical clinics into chaos, resulting in closures and risking access to health care for all of our families.
But it would also have a very real effect on patients. The
Everyone who lost insurance when their employers dropped coverage due to Obamacare's expenses would then lose coverage again if their exchange plan was eliminated overnight.
It would also mean millions of people with preexisting conditions would not only lose current coverage, but they'd no longer have affordable access to the health care at all. I cannot in good conscience support a plan that does not provide an alternative process for a cancer patient who now has access to treatment.
The effects of repeal without a replacement mechanism are bad enough, but there's also the political reality that it could never get done in the current divided
I joined a majority of
The only way around the filibuster is to use a process call reconciliation. It can only be done with items concerning the budget and it can only be done once a year - when the budget is being written and this was the path we tried to take most recently with the
Using reconciliation would have allowed us to leverage the Republican majorities the American people gave us in the
We couldn't pass everything we wanted with the reconciliation process - such as selling insurance over state lines and providing for more transparency in drug and medical pricing - because the
Though the
Those of us in
Read this original document at: https://abraham.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/column-why-obamacare-repeal-must-come-replacement
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