Freedom

Paul Ryan just wants you to have the freedom to drop dead.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said Sunday that he doesn’t know how many Americans would lose coverage under his proposal to revise the Affordable Care Act, which is under fire from fellow Republicans, AARP and virtually every sector of the U.S. health-care industry.

“I can’t answer that question,” Ryan said in an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

“It’s up to people,” he said. “Here’s the premise of your question: Are you going to stop mandating people buy health insurance? People are going to do what they want to do with their lives because we believe in individual freedom in this country.”

It's up to you. You can choose the live saving cancer treatments, or you can have your 218 iPhones.  That's what America is all about. Ryan says this is about freeing us from the yoke of the individual mandate. But actually he means to replace it with one that insurance companies can collect on.

The individual mandate — the loathed requirement that nearly everyone get health insurance or pay a penalty — would be eliminated in the GOP repeal bill introduced Monday. But House Republicans have come up with their own cudgel to compel healthy Americans to purchase coverage, with the goal of offsetting the costs of insuring sicker patients.

Their plan would require individuals to maintain “continuous coverage” — or pay a penalty. People who let their coverage lapse would face a 30 percent surcharge on their monthly premiums for one year when they next buy coverage. The idea, like Obamacare's individual mandate, is to prevent people from purchasing insurance only after they get sick.

I do not know if you can get out of it by buying your insurer an iPhone. I am amused, in the meantime, about the ongoing parlor game over guessing whether the "principled conservatives" in the congress will sink the repeal over issues they may pretend to have with these replacement bills.

Of course Republicans will pass the repeal. Why? Because it does the one thing they actually care about. 

Two of the biggest tax cuts in Republican proposals to repeal the Affordable Care Act would deliver roughly $144 billion over the coming decade to those with incomes of $1 million or more, according to a congressional analysis.