House And Senate Republicans Have Opposing Solutions To The Same Problem
With all the talk of amendments, CBO scores and threats against Alaska, it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture, which is striking. For years, Republican officials have been pointing to problems with the ACA marketplaces for individual insurance as evidence of the Affordable Care Act’s failure. In May, the House passed a bill that would provide short-term stabilization funding for the exchanges while transforming and deeply cutting Medicaid later in the decade. But the Senate’s preferred solution flips the House’s bill on its head. The “skinny repeal” is likely to further destabilize the exchanges while leaving Medicaid untouched. To put it more starkly, the proposals advanced by House and Senate Republicans embed different, even opposing, ideas about the underlying policy problem that needs solving. The main thing they have in common is that they both plausibly address the GOP’s political need to attack the ACA.