Employers and individuals alike must be free to choose better, more affordable health insurance.
A t a time when Republicans should be building on President Trump’s greatest first-term health care victory, some are trying to give Democrats everything they want on Obamacare for nothing in return. That weak approach would protect Democrats from accountability for Obamacare’s junk coverage and outrageous premiums.
Democrats are continuing to block a deal to end the government “shutdown.” They say they won’t vote to pay federal workers — my wife is still working, without pay — unless Republicans extend the temporary Obamacare subsidies that Congress created during the Covid-19 pandemic. Those subsidies should have expired with every other emergency measure, yet Democrats kept them through this year.
Why? Because Democrats hope government subsidies will numb voters to the pain that Obamacare causes. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that Obamacare is doubling premiums for most exchange enrollees. Premiums will rise another 20 percent in 2026.
The regulations that Democrats claim protect patients with preexisting conditions are instead making coverage worse. Former Biden economic adviser Michael Geruso found Obamacare itself is causing “backdoor discrimination” against patients with chronic illnesses, limiting their choice of treatments, and costing them thousands of dollars annually. Democrats blame insurers, but Geruso says these effects are “beyond any insurance carrier’s ability to control.”
Democrats are the party of the little guy, so naturally they want permanent subsidies for people earning up to $600,000 per year. Households earning $500,000 could get $7,000. Ultimately, $440 billion would go to private health insurance companies and $48 billion to bondholders. About one-third of Obamacare enrollees would pay nothing toward their health plans — a dynamic that is already causing an explosion of fraud.
And still, the Democrats’ subsidies would do absolutely nothing to reduce Obamacare’s cost or stop its regulation-driven discrimination against the sick.
Here’s a crazy thought: if government regulations are making your health insurance too expensive or limiting your choice of treatments or providers, those regulations should be optional. You should have the right to choose better, more affordable health insurance.
Republicans should give consumers that freedom by building on President Trump’s biggest first-term health care victory, which freed consumers from the pain of Obamacare.
In 1996, a Republican Congress and President Clinton exempted so-called short-term health insurance from all federal health insurance regulations. A Democratic Congress and President Obama likewise exempted those plans from Obamacare. In 2018, the Trump administration removed unnecessary restrictions on those plans, freeing them to offer greater consumer protections than any past administration.
The CBO found that Trump’s changes enabled most Obamacare enrollees to obtain comprehensive coverage at premiums as much as 60 percent below the lowest-price Obamacare plans — and often with “lower deductibles or wider provider networks.” Imagine: people not needing subsidies to get quality health insurance.
Republicans could free consumers to choose high-quality, affordable coverage by codifying Trump’s rules and writing those consumer protections into permanent law. The resulting health plans would be higher quality than Obamacare plans because they would not face Obamacare’s incentives to discriminate against the sick.
Freeing people from Obamacare holds a bipartisan pedigree — from none other than Barack Obama himself. In 2014, his administration recognized that Obamacare’s regulations are so destabilizing, and make health insurance so expensive, that they would destroy health insurance markets in U.S. territories.
Obama’s solution was to exempt U.S. territories from Obamacare’s health insurance regulations. For more than a decade, residents of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands have had more freedom than mainland U.S. citizens to choose their health insurance.
Everyone deserves that freedom. Republicans should simultaneously free all employers and individuals to purchase any health plan available in any U.S. territory. Many could buy coverage at a lower premium from the same insurer they have right now. For most Obamacare enrollees, that coverage would be better and cheaper.
Congress absolutely should not extend Obamacare subsidies for the wealthy. Not by one day. Not by one penny.
At some point, however, a deal might be unavoidable. If that time comes, trading a temporary extension of subsidies for the wealthy for a permanent restoration of the freedom to choose better, more affordable health insurance would be not just a good deal, but an impressive one.