What Went Down On Health Care This Week

https://twitter.com/BenjySarlin/status/890299640389787648

Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina, the head of the House Freedom Caucus, is already criticizing “skinny repeal,” according to Capitol Hill reporters. But first things first: Conservatives in the Senate may be okay with the “skinny” approach. Here’s what Rand Paul said, per Politico, “I’ve always said I will vote for any permutation of repeal.” A spokesman for Mike Lee was non-committal. I had not quite realized this initially, but skinny repeal or something like it has the potential to unify moderates and conservatives in the Senate. It is a kind of “pure repeal,” like Paul favors, in that it doesn’t require him to vote for any kind of new health policy that benefits insurers or creates new regulations. But it doesn’t gut Medicaid, which Dean Heller and the moderates oppose. (Heller has already suggested that he supports this idea.) The only problem is that we aren’t sure that skinny repeal, particularly getting rid of the individual mandate, would actually work in terms of policy, or if it would cause even higher premiums. (Health care experts are actually pretty sure it won’t work. Look at the Twitter feed of the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Larry Levitt, who is very skeptical.) I would not be surprised to see Republicans look for a repeal of the medical device tax and the employer mandate but try to find a way to pass something that creates incentives for people to buy insurance before they get sick (which is the point of the individual mandate).