After six years of railing against President Obama's health care policy, House Republicans have finally presented their own plan.
If it sounds odd that the group that voted more than 50 times to repeal the Affordable Care Act never actually had a replacement planned, then you clearly aren't familiar enough with U.S. politics.
By unveiling the new plan, Speaker Paul Ryan is trying to make good on the pledge he made when he took the helm of the House GOP caucus last year to recast the party as one of ideas, rather than as simply a "Party of No" bitterly opposed to the president.
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The plan that Ryan presented on Wednesday eliminates the ACA's insurance mandate for individuals and businesses, a move that would most likely undercut the federal and state insurance exchanges set up by Obamacare.
Instead, the plan proposes offering a tax credit to each individual or family that does not have coverage through an employer. However, the plan does not specify the size of the eventual tax credit.
Indeed, the plan does not specify much in terms of cost. It has no projected total price tag.
Other parts of the proposal are a variety of familiar conservative ideas, including turning Medicaid into a block grant program, establishing subsidized high-risk insurance pools for people who insurers do not want to cover and allowing insurers to sell plans across state lines.
One part of the plan likely to generate the most attention and controversy is a proposal to raise the eligibility age for Medicare from 65 to 67, beginning in 2020. Many Republicans will have a hard time bringing themselves to back that idea, especially considering that their own standard bearer, Donald Trump, excoriated opponents during the presidential primary who supported major changes to Medicare.
Business groups have not embraced the plan with the enthusiasm that one typically expects of GOP policies.
"This would be a new tax on benefits, on working families, and could eventually threaten the employer-sponsored health insurance that so many Americans enjoy," James P. Gelfand, senior vice president of the ERISA Industry Committee, a trade association for large employers, told The New York Times.
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