A plan to be proposed by some Republicans in Congress will merely be "Obamacare lite," Louisiana Gov.
Bobby Jindal writes in an opinion piece for Politico.
Republicans want to propose an alternative to the Affordable Care Act before the U.S. Supreme Court hears the King v. Burwell case on March 4. That case seeks to drop subsidies for people in states that did not set up their own healthcare exchanges, instead relying on the federal exchange.
Jindal agrees with the strategy, but says the GOP plan has the same problems Republicans have with Obamacare – just on a lower scale.
Obamacare is "chock full" of new taxes, totaling $1 trillion through 2022, Jindal writes.
"Yet several alternative proposals being discussed by Republicans don’t actually repeal the law’s tax increases," he writes. "Instead, they repeal the law’s tax increases, only to replace them with new revenue hikes. So, rather than raise taxes by more than $1 trillion, as Obamacare did, these plans raise taxes by perhaps, say, 'only' $500 billion."
That puts Republicans in the position of being "cheap" Democrats, Jindal argues.
"We’ll raise taxes — but just … less than Obamacare. We’ll spend hundreds of billions on new entitlement programs — but just … less than Obamacare," he says.
Republican plans also don't solve the problem of putting American workers in the position of working fewer hours to meet Obamacare's rules on full-time workers, Jindal said. The GOP plans will simply have the same problem, just on a smaller scale.
Jindal said there are conservative plans that don't end up being "Obamacare lite." One of them was proposed by Jindal's own conservative policy group America Next.
He pointed to the liberal advocacy group Families USA , which he said has called for "a veritable orgy of new Obamacare-related spending." They serve as a reminder that the left will continually seek more government in the health care system, he said.
Conservatives, Jindal said, "can never hope to outspend the left by acting as cheap liberals."
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