Daily Freeman (Kingston, NY)

GOP has chance to do health care right

- Michael Reagan Making Sense Michael Reagan is syndicated by Cagle Cartoons Inc.

Reagan: Under Obamacare, many people can’t purchase health care because deductible­s are too expensive.

According to the architects of Obamacare — if you can call the Democrats who designed President Obama’s signature failure “architects” — I can’t be trusted to buy my own health insurance.

The architects of Obamacare in Washington, all Democrats, decided six or seven years ago they knew what the best health plan was for everyone, rich or poor, healthy or sick, old or young, California­n or New Yorker.

For them health-care choice was never an option for individual American citizens — it was one-size fits all. They decided that every American human being, no matter what their sex, age, health or personal needs or desires, deserved Cadillac care for any possible sickness or service.

Just in case you might desire to change your gender someday, for instance, you’d be covered for the necessary surgery — and get to pay for it in your insurance premium today.

They promised insurance premiums would be low and be subsidized for the poor. Co-pays also would be minimal. They promised all Americans would have access to affordable quality health care.

But in the real world, it turned out many people can’t afford to use their Obamacare insurance cards to actually purchase health care because the deductible­s are too expensive, or Obamacare’s architects severely limited the kinds of health care plans insurance companies were allowed to offer customers.

It should surprise no one that Obama’s pie-in-the sky promises have been broken and his plan is on fire and crashing to Earth.

But now even some Democrats are admitting Obamacare has got serious problems. Of course, no one in the liberal media is pressing Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi to reveal how they’d change Obamacare to make it better. If the media did ask a Washington Democrat to solve a problem they’ve created with one of their social policies, we all know the answer — throw more federal money and subsidies at it.

Republican­s want radical changes that will get the government out of the health care insurance racket. They want to repeal and replace Obamacare’s mandates so that individual­s can buy the health insurance plan they want from insurance companies that want to sell it to them. What a concept.

They want individual­s and small businesses to be able to join together in larger groups or insurance pools to pay lower premiums.

And they want people to be able to buy their health insurance across state lines instead of being forced to buy from their state’s monopoly provider.

Republican­s in Congress — if they can get their act together — are in a position to radically change things for the better.

But they need to come together, present a patient-based, market-based repeal & replace health care plan to the Senate and then force the Democrats there to explain to the country why they are the ones whose filibuster­s are preventing it from passing.

Republican­s have to make the Democrats own and defend Obamacare, which will soon die a natural death.

If that doesn’t work, President Trump should invite every Republican and Democrat leader from Congress into the White House and lock the doors. Then he should not allow anyone of either party to eat or pee or leave until they come up with a solution.

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