The GOP would like to allow dependents to remain on their parents' insurance policies through age 25. But they can do that now, if the dependents are in college (and assuming one of the parents has a job that offers health insurance at all). This ignores that fact that a Democratic proposal would have allowed dependents to remain on a parent's policy to age 26. It also ignores the fact that these dependents are the most profitable risks for the insurance companies.
The last provision is a little ˜red meat for the base':
Republicans would codify the Hyde Amendment. The Hyde Amendment, originally introduced by the late Rep. Henry Hyde (D-IL) in 1976 as an amendment to the Medicaid bill, would deny federal funds to pay for abortions, except in cases of rape, incest, and endangerment of the mother's life.
The Republicans are wrong on the medicine and wrong on the morality of the Hyde Amendment. Medically, enforcement would only force practitioners to call the procedure by some other name " a D&C, for example. Or they will claim the mother's life was in danger. Who even among Republicans would presume to second-guess, from a distance, a transient surgical exigency?
Morally, I cannot see a distinction between a life conceived through rape or incest and a life conceived by any other means. We can deplore the circumstances while still valuing the sanctity of life that results. If life is sacred, then it logically must be sacred in all cases " and that view must extend to the lives Republicans would take through capital punishment.
The Hyde Amendment was wrong-headed 33 years ago and it is wrong-headed today. ˜Nuf said about the Hyde Amendment.
The result of all these initiatives, according to the GOP plan, would be to lower health care premiums. I have no idea how they would achieve that goal because their plan takes no revenue away from insurance companies and takes no cost out of the present system. While a few people, mainly the young and healthy, might see slight premium reductions, revenues generated by the entire risk pool can only increase both at once and over time. And not everyone will be able to get in the pool.
I see nothing in the Republican version of health reform that would warrant even a moment of serious debate on the House floor. Let's hope that no one in the House leadership succumbs to any sudden desire for bipartisanship and lets the GOP proposal get that far.
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