#ObamaCare's Redistribution Scheme Exposed

One of the very best recent commentaries I've read.

From Holman Jenkins, Jr., at WSJ, "How the GOP Should Fix ObamaCare":

Let's understand: The stumbling block to fixing Mr. Obama's broken promise is Democrats clinging to the central redistributive scheme embedded in ObamaCare. There is no reconciling the two.

Americans are beginning to understand that the essence of the Affordable Care Act is that millions of people are being conscripted to buy overpriced insurance they would never choose for themselves in order to afford Mr. Obama monies to spend on the poor and those who are medically uninsurable due to pre-existing conditions. Both Mr. Obama and Republicans are blowing smoke in claiming that the damage done to the individual market by the forced cancellation of "substandard" plans (i.e., those that don't meet the purposes of ObamaCare) can somehow be reversed at this point. It can't be.

What can be done is Congress creating a new option in the form of a national health insurance charter under which insurers could design new low-cost policies free of mandated benefits imposed by ObamaCare and the 50 states that many of those losing their individual policies today surely would find attractive.

What's the first thing the new nationally chartered insurers would do? Rush out cheap, high-deductible policies, allaying some of the resentment that the ObamaCare mandate provokes among the young, healthy and footloose affluent.

These folks could buy the minimalist coverage that (for various reasons) makes sense for them. They wouldn't be forced to buy excessive coverage they don't need to subsidize the old and sick.

If this idea sounds familiar, it was proposed right here three years ago, after the 2010 elections in which Democrats lost the House due to public disquiet over ObamaCare.

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