Republicans Should Blame Their Own Health Care Blunders for the Loss of the House

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Jason Lewis claims that “The Republican Party lost its House majority on July 28, 2017, when Sen. John McCain ended the party’s seven-year quest to repeal Obamacare.” Up to then, he says, the Republican leadership had done “an admirable job herding cats,” culminating in the passage by the House (on their second try) of the American Health Care Act (AHCA). Then McCain blew it all in the Senate.

Nonsense. The cat-herders who wrote the AHCA were themselves to blame. From the beginning, the AHCA had no credibility in tackling the problem that ranks №1 in the health care concerns of voters: Guaranteeing affordable access to health care for the millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions.

Here is what really happened.

The ACA’s Promise of High Risk Pools was a Sham

Lewis claims that the AHCA would have covered the most difficult-to-insure with $138 billion worth or high-risk pools. Yes, in principle, high-risk pools are one potential way to protect people with pre-existing conditions. But if we understand the way they work, it is easy to see that the token version offered by the AHCA was never more than a sham.