In advance of yet another House vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act that’s expected later this week, Gov. Bobby Jindal is warning his fellow Republicans not to push for an alternative to the so-called Obamacare plan that Jindal says amounts to “Obamacare-lite.”
“There is a secret that people outside of Washington, D.C., aren’t aware of right now: Some Republicans in Congress are on the verge of proposing an alternative to Obamacare that imposes new tax hikes on the American people,” Jindal writes in a guest editorial published by Politico.
Jindal says Republican alternatives are emerging now because the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in March regarding a case that “could upend Obamacare completely.”
“In King v. Burwell, the court—if it follows the plain text of the law, which says that only individuals purchasing coverage on an ‘exchange established by the state’ are eligible for federal insurance subsidies—could cause disruption to individuals in the 36 states that did not establish a state exchange, and instead rely on the federally run healthcare.gov exchange,” he writes. “For this reason, many observers have argued that conservatives need to present an alternative vision of health reform before the court rules. I wholeheartedly agree with that position. However, I fear that many of the proposals being discussed by Republicans in Washington do not truly represent conservative reform.”
Jindal say some of the major flaws of the Affordable Care Act—and mainly, taxes—can also be found in the alternatives being discussed by Republicans in Washington, D.C.
“Their plans don’t repeal the over $1 trillion in tax hikes in Obamacare. Instead, they repeal the taxes and replace them with other taxes. So while politicians talk about how Obamacare needs to be repealed, and how the country cannot afford this new entitlement program at a time when we can’t even pay for our existing entitlement programs—they lack the courage to get rid of the taxes in Obamacare,” he writes. “To be blunt, these alleged conservative plans are really just cheap liberal plans that copy Obamacare. It’s Obamacare-lite.”
Jindal also uses the guest editorial to tout his own alternative plan to the Affordable Care Act, which he released in April last year through America Next, the conservative policy group he formed in 2013 and serves as executive chairman. Along with the editorial, Jindal has sent a letter to every member of Congress, in which he says: “I urge you to examine the proposals in the America Next Plan closely, and to be bold in putting forward strong conservative alternatives to Obamacare—ones that do not merely disguise Obamacare’s spending and tax increases in other forms.”
Read the full column, and see the full letter Jindal has sent to Congress.
