To know where you’re going, it helps to recognize where you’ve been. Examining the causes of Republicans’ legislative setbacks on health care—including last month’s dramatic failure of a “skinny” repeal bill on the Senate floor—provides the glimmer of a path forward for a legislative “repeal-and-replace” package, if they are bold enough to take it.
In both the House and the Senate, debate focused on a push-pull between two competing issues: The status of Medicaid expansion in the 31 states that accepted it, and what to do about Obamacare’s regulatory regime. During the spring and summer, congressional leaders attempted messy compromises on each issue, phasing out the higher federal match for Medicaid expansion populations over time, while crafting complex processes allowing states, insurers, or both to waive some—but not all—of Obamacare’s regulatory requirements.
But rather than constructing substantively cumbersome waiver arrangements—the legislative equivalent of a camel being a horse written by committee—Occam’s Razor suggests a simpler, cleaner solution: Preserving the status quo (i.e., the enhanced federal match) on Medicaid expansion in exchange for full repeal of Obamacare’s insurance regulations at the federal level.
A “grand bargain” in this vein would give Senate moderates a clear win on Medicaid expansion, while providing conservatives their desired outcome on Obamacare’s regulations. For this conservative at least, the regulations represent the heart of the law, prompting both its spending on exchange subsidies—to offset the higher premium costs from the regulatory mandates—and the taxes needed to fund that spending. Expelling the regulations from the federal statute books would represent a clear step towards the promise of repealing Obamacare “root and branch,” and return control of health insurance to the states, where it lay from 1947’s McCarran-Ferguson Act until Obamacare.
Federal Regulations Are Driving Up Health Costs
When coupled with structural reforms to Medicaid—a block grant or per capita caps—included in the House and Senate bills, repealing the federal regulations would enable the “laboratories of democracy” to reassert control over their health insurance markets and Medicaid programs. It would also contrast favorably with a recent proposal introduced by senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA). While Graham claims his plan would “empower each individual state to choose the path that works best for them,” in reality it would retain federal dictates regarding pre-existing conditions—the most costly of all the Obamacare mandates.
In a sad irony, some of the same senators who want Congress to respect their states’ decisions to expand Medicaid also want to dictate to other states—as the Graham-Cassidy plan does—how their insurance markets should function. But the true test of federalism applies not in the principle’s convenience, but in its inconvenience.
I do not support single-payer health care, but as a federalist, I support the right of states like California and Vermont to explore a state single-payer system. There are other, arguably better, ways to cover individuals with pre-existing conditions than a Washington-imposed requirement, and true adherents of federalism would empower states to explore them.
Yes, This Idea Is Imperfect
To be sure, even this attempted “grand bargain” includes noteworthy flaws. Retaining the enhanced Medicaid match encourages states to prioritize expansion populations over individuals with disabilities in traditional Medicaid, and may lure even more states to accept the expansion. Keeping the higher Medicaid spending levels would preclude repealing all of Obamacare’s tax increases. And the Senate parliamentarian may advise that repealing Obamacare’s regulations does not comport with the budget reconciliation process. But despite the obvious obstacles, lawmakers should seriously explore this option. After Republicans promised repeal for four straight election cycles, the American people deserve no less.
Throughout the repeal process, conservatives have bent over backwards to accommodate moderates’ shifting legislative goalposts. When moderates objected to passing the repeal legislation all but one of them voted for two years ago, conservatives helped construct a “repeal-and-replace” bill. When moderates wanted to retain the Medicaid expansion in their states—even though the 2015 repeal bill moderates voted for eliminated it entirely—conservatives agreed, albeit at the traditional match rates. And when Senate moderates complained, conservatives agreed to a longer phase-out of the higher match rate, despite justifiable fears that the phase-out would never occur.
Winston Churchill purportedly claimed that Americans will always do the right thing—once they have exhausted every other possibility. This “grand bargain” may not represent the “right” outcome, or the best outcome. But conservatives have exhausted many other possibilities in attempting to come to an agreement. Perhaps moderates will finally come to accept federalism—giving states a true choice over their insurance markets, rather than trying to dictate terms—as the solution to keeping their promise to the American people and repealing Obamacare.
