This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
What will happen if Republicans gain the votes — including the big one in the Oval Office — to do what they want to do to Obamacare? For a clue, look at what's happening in Kentucky.
Recall that the state's new governor, Matt Bevin, is a tea partyer who fulminated against the Affordable Care Act in his campaign last fall and promised to get rid of it.
In the brief period he has been in office, Bevin has made two decisions on Obamacare. He's getting rid of Kynect, the Kentucky health-insurance exchange, meaning he's inviting the federal government in to run the state's marketplace. And he has reversed his pledge to quash Medicaid expansion. Instead of repealing it, he's now talking about reforming how Kentucky administers the expansion instead.
The question of who runs Kentucky's exchange doesn't matter much, so his "bold" action will have little effect. But on Medicaid, his decision to punt will matter a lot. Lots of voters in the state get to keep their insurance.
The lesson, then, is that as much as Republicans hate "Obamacare," they can live with the basic structure of the Affordable Care Act: Medicaid for the least able to pay, government-run exchanges for buying private insurance, and a gentle nudge away from employment-linked insurance.
No, a Republican-run Affordable Care Act wouldn't be identical to what we have now. We'll always have fights over proper subsidy levels, and whether Medicaid should be run with an emphasis on preventing fraud or on providing access. Democrats are going to want to regulate what doctors, hospitals and insurers do more than Republicans will. Republicans are more comfortable with unfunded programs than Democrats are, so the taxes will be reduced or eliminated.
But the basic structure will remain.
The remaining problem for Republicans is their hatred of Obamacare, and their voters' professed hatred of it too. The best Republican "replace" plan would be just "repeal" everything and then reintroduce identical programs — but with nice Republican names.
So instead of the Obamacare marketplaces we could have, say, Ayn Rand Enterprise Zones for health insurance. Instead of the individual mandate, how about Freedom Patriotic Incentives? Everyone who enrolls is promised a tax rebate (which would function exactly the same as requiring a fine on all who don't enroll).
Replace the Cadillac tax on expensive employer-supplied plans and replace it with, well, most likely Republicans will just eliminate Obamacare taxes and blow up the deficit. But they could repeal subsidies for middle-income policy holders on the exchanges and replace them with, let's see, Ronald Reagan Means Tested Vouchers. And instead of Medicaid expansion, call it American Exceptionalism Health Care.
Would that do the trick? Sure, if a new Republican president could keep the backbenchers in Congress on board. Since most of the outrage was phony in the first place, a phony repeal and replace should work well enough.