TrumpCare: What will it look like?

a bottle of Thunderbird and a pack of rusty razor blades

There are at least seven different replacement plans that Republican legislators and conservative think tanks have offered in recent years. I’ve spent the past week reading them, and this is a quick summary of what I learned (you can read a longer version here).

Yes, Republicans have replacement plans

It is true that the party has not coalesced around one plan — but there are real policy proposals coming from Republican legislators and conservative think tanks. There are two plans I think are most important to know about:

Better Way, a proposal from House Speaker Paul Ryan, would overhaul the individual market and Medicaid in a way that would generally benefit healthy, young people and disadvantage older, sick people.

The Patient CARE Act, from the Senate Finance Committee, is similar to Better Way but focuses more on helping low-income people.

Other plans that exist and could come into the debate include:

Two plans introduced as legislation in Congress: one from Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), who is in the running to become Trump’s health and human services secretary, and one from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)

Two plans from conservative think tanks, the American Enterprise Institute and the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity

A bare-bones plan from President-Elect Donald Trump

There is significant variation in what the plans propose

On one end of the spectrum, you see plans from Trump and Cruz that would repeal Obamacare and replace it with virtually nothing. On the other end, there are plans from conservative think tanks that go as far as to keep the Affordable Care Act marketplaces and continue to give low-income Americans the most generous insurance subsidies.

If we can say one thing about most Republican plans, it is this: They are better for younger, healthy people and worse for older, sicker people.

In general, conservative replacement plans offer less financial help to those who would use a lot of insurance. This will make their insurance subsidies significantly less expensive than Obamacare’s — but could hurt people who have high medical costs

jcboy wrote:

The difference between Obamacare and Trumpcare is simple. Obamacare was crafted line by line by Obama and his policy wonks and it was actually many years in the making. Trump, on the other hand, just told the Republicans to "Come up with something and make it quick!"