Analyzing the Republican Healthcare Reform Proposal

Yesterday, the GOP presented their health care reform bill to the nation. The response was expected. Many Democrats instinctively opposed the bill because it was a Republican bill, while many Republicans automatically supported it for the same reasons. However, many did not actually analyze the proposal without the lenses of their bias. I will admit that I have a bias towards the left, but I am willing to concede, a trait not possessed by many on either side of the political pendulum. With that said, let us dive in to the complex pool of healthcare reform.

            From the first reading of the proposal, I thought to myself, �Wow. This sounds a lot like Obamacare.� I may have thought this because of the very first sentence of the proposal which reads, �The health care reforms outlined are designed to: Make quality health care coverage affordable and accessible for every American, regardless of pre-existing health conditions.� Wait a minute. That sounds exactly like the goal of Obamacare.

 In the actual bill for the Affordable Care Act, it states in Section 2712 that, �A group health plan and a health insurance issuer offering group or individual health insurance coverage shall not rescind such plan or coverage with respect to an enrollee once the enrollee is covered under such plan or coverage involved.� Based on that, I think that there are some similarities between the two plans; to say the least. The new proposal went on to say that, �The plan allows states, small businesses, associations, and other organizations to band together and offer health insurance at lower costs.� While that is a great idea (and I will admit that it is a great idea), it does not explain how that plan will work. The relationship that this proposal would create would be extremely complicated and I would daresay, socialist. The government stepping in to facilitate this sort of engagement does not seem very capitalistic and comes across as non-Republican. But I�m not concerned by that.

However, I am slightly concerned by the vagueness in this proposal. It presented ideas that sound optimal, but provided no explanation on how those ideas would be implemented and the effect it would have on the average American. The paragraph about how companies would work together to decrease the costs of health insurance that I previously mentioned is just one example of that vagueness. Hopefully as time goes on and this proposal makes its rounds in the House, we can get some more straightforward answers about how these policies will be implemented.

Until then, I have one observation that does not deal with the bill itself, but with the response to this bill. We have become so divided as a nation that a bill with the word �Republican� in front of it immediately determines whether we support it or not. If this bill were written by Democrats, the majority of the people supporting it would reject the Republican proposal and vice versa. The same people who dismissed Bernie Sanders because they thought that his ideas, while idealistic, were not practical support the major impracticalities of this bill. And that is because of it�s label. During the debate over the original Affordable Care Act in 2010, Republicans purposely referred to the bill as �Obamacare� because it would ensure that their constituents would not support it. During last week�s joint address to Congress, the Democrats made it clear that they would not support anything said by Donald Trump and it looked to me that many listened to President Trump but did not hear what he had to say. And the same thing happened for the past eight years under Obama with the Republicans.

It�s all about the label. The �D�s� and R�s� beside politician�s names that we see on TV immediately determine our perception of them and determine if we are willing to listen to what they have to say. I know that I will sound like a stereotypical millennial when I say this, but I think it�s time to drop the labels.