Jeb! laid out his Obamacare replacement plan last week. Rubio’s plan was unveiled a couple of months ago. The plans have already been reviewed individually in other publications, and there are gaps in the available information about them, so I don’t propose to analyze them in detail, but it is worth looking at the essential similarities and differences, because they tell us something important about the aspirations of the two candidates.
What they have in common:
- Elimination of the individual and employer mandates. Translation: Thank God my sacred right to be uninsured is being returned to me! I will cherish it as much as my rights to be poor and homeless.
- Elimination of some aspects of community rating. Translation: Health care is a consumer good and an individual responsibility that is little different from any other. If you’re sick, it’s probably your own fault. Don’t stick the healthy and wealthy with the bill for your unhealthy behavior.
- Elimination of Medicaid expansion. Translation: No more free stuff for moochers!
- Elimination of cost control measures. Translation: We sure could use some additional campaign contributions from health care providers.
Where they differ:
- Jeb!care’s emphasis on federalism. Translation: Dumping difficult problems like pre-existing conditions on the states is good politics. Anyway, I was a governor, so it makes sense to delegate important issues to people like me.
- Marcocare’s attempt to push people out of employer plans and into individual plans. Translation: I’m new, I’m bold, and I want to make the welfare state work in the days of the Uber economy.
Final judgment: Regardless of the wisdom of Marco’s plan to equalize the tax treatment of employer-based plans and individual policies, it is going to be unpopular, and it is going to hurt him both in the primaries and, if he gets that far, in the general election.